Dracula the Un-Dead

Another book crossed off for the year. A slow and steady progress, especially when it is a book that my husband and I read together. A sequel to Dracula, Dracula the Un-Dead was picked for the two us because when we were at a library sale one state over, I found a different book: Dracula vs Hitler. My husband laughed and said we should read that one together, to which I replied that we might need to read Dracula the Un-Dead first so that he has context on Dracula. I had just finished reading Stoker’s Dracula as well, so the timing was great.

Dracula the Un-Dead is written by Bram Stoker’s great-grandnephew Dacre Stoker, which my logic would have said that this would be a good book because he would try to follow richly with Bram’s original storyline, but give it more modernism. It did that in the sense that Dacre Stoker did a direct follow-up to Dracula by focusing on Mina and Jonathan’s son, but unfortunately it fell a little short of our expectations.

For my husband, there were points in the book that did not make sense in terms of logic, like [Spoilers] how Bathory’s powers work in comparison to Dracula’s, what the point of having Cotford as a character was, and what the hell, Quincy?! He was not a personal fan of how it ended, thinking it was pretty abrupt.

My own thing is that the book tried too hard to be entertaining and catering to a general audience of today’s scope. You can tell that the co-author was a screenwriter because it was written as if it could be adapted to a movie. There is a lot of drama, fighting sequences and adventure, the sequel’s need to have a mix of old and new characters, plot twists, and a hugely chalked up villain. Bathory is a sadistic lesbian vampire who had been through every trauma you can write into a backstory for a female who was a mortal in Romanian 1500s. They make her super OP (overpowering), and had to continually remind you of just how sadistic she is with her rants about her hatred of God and the need to over take Him by being super powerful, and the satanic rituals involving carving up women and having orgies with other women in their blood. To me, it just gets to be overkill and filler.

They try to have it be set in real-time 1911-1912 by including interactions with real historical figures, similar to Kurt Andersen’s Heyday, which I reference in that review to being enjoyable and different. For Dracula the Un-Dead, they only have a few instances of that kind of interaction, but it still made a positive note for me.

All in all, I would say this was a one-and-done book for me. For some reason, I think of The Mummy Returns, where it was alright for a sequel, but they should probably have let it die. If this sounds like something up your alley, though, you will be able to find it here.

4/10