Here’s an interesting thought. I handed my copy of this book to my 22 year old nephew and asked him to write a review of it. He emailed to me today and so I get to share it with you. I do have to warn you he’s toned it down a bit, I can’t share with you what he really said to me.
I read Dacre Stoker’s book and after finishing, my first thoughts were “What a waste of time.” By itself it’s fairly good, well written, with the characters well defined. However as a sequel to Dracula, it lacked a certain something, and followed the really annoying modern trend of having no absolute Evil, but rather misunderstood beings fighting another being that was evil, yes, but not sheer unadulterated Badness.
If this had been a stand alone novel, I would have liked it, but it’s not. It was a disappointment, and I spent a lot of the time reading it wishing I could shout at either the characters or the author.
Hello, I saw this book on its release, I was interested to see how Bram’s descendent handled the enormous task of a follow up book, though I am surprised at how little attention it has received. It makes you wonder. Perhaps he might have got a better response had he not jumped upon the coat tails of his famous relative.
Best wishes,
SP
It’s certainly interesting. Are you saying he shouldn’t have written a Dracula book? Or maybe you’re saying he should have done it in a totally different way? I’m just not sure I understand. It’s very difficult to do a sequel when one wasn’t planned but to do one so long after makes it even more difficult.
If you follow this link you can see my review. I got totally different thing out of this book.
I haven’t read The Undead, but it’s got to be very hard to produce a follow up if he doesn’t keep the same style (which in Bram’s case is quite authentically victorian). Yeah I think he should have stepped into his own imagination and not used the Dracula theme. Then people wouldn’t need to make comparisons perhaps? Definitely food for thought thanks for the link to your review!
Have a good weekend,
Socialpaws
No, it’s not at all the same style. The writing is much more modern and that’s one of the things I object to. The style of writing could not have changed that dramatically in the 20 years between the two books.
Now, that would have been interesting. I think I’d like to see him use his imagination. The only thing is that people are going to compare them anyway, it doesn’t really matter what he does people will still compare them and he loses out, Bram was easily the better writer.
I’d like to hear his non-censored comments
Sorry, I don’t allow those words on this blog and I think he knows that.