Reviews tagging 'Injury/Injury detail'

Dracula by Bram Stoker

64 reviews

meganpbennett's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

I read Dracula many many years ago, and thought it was interesting. Didn't give it much thought except for a few school assignments, or considering a reread along with some other classics. Then, in 2022, people started sharing a link to a substack, where someone was emailing the novel to readers, in real time. I signed up. 

All of the characters keep a journal of some form, and it's all dated. In the standard printing of the novel, all of Johnathon's several months at Castle Dracula would have been first, then followed up by Mina and Lucy's correspondence. In this case, it's in real time, so you only see what happens on any given day. There are long gaps between Harker's entries, as he starts to realize what is really going on and how he is trapped in the castle. Lucy's death scene, a chapter or so in the book, is stretched over the almost a month Dracula fed on her until she became a vampire, making it all the more emotional when they have kill her. Or when the group heads to Castle Dracula, and it takes the same number of days for us as it did for them. Very interesting way of reading a novel, and one that several other people are putting together. 

Edit: 2023-11-07: After forgetting to unsubscribe from Dracula Daily before the novel reset, I decided to reread it. Still a fascinating way to read a novel, in chronological order. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gaslighting, Gore, Medical trauma, Rape, Stalking, Body horror, Classism, Fire/Fire injury, Blood, Confinement, Death, Misogyny, Murder, Racial slurs, Injury/Injury detail, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Forced institutionalization, Medical content, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Religious bigotry, Grief, Racism, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, and Violence

maggies's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

Read along with Dracula Daily. An engaging way to consume the classic, but I didn't particularly enjoy the book—pacing was wildly erratic but overall too slow for my liking and the misogyny was less than palatable. The men were so stupid most of the time, and the women were frustratingly subservient. Skimmed sections of exposition which were uninteresting. Glad I've read it now, but won't be reading again.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Medical content, Mental illness, Gore, Confinement, Death, Injury/Injury detail, and Misogyny

tmickey's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Gore, Death, Violence, Suicidal thoughts, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Murder, Injury/Injury detail, Death of parent, and Blood

Moderate: Child abuse

leanne_miron's review against another edition

dark tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Body horror, Murder, Blood, Death, Gore, and Stalking

Moderate: Forced institutionalization, Medical content, Animal death, Confinement, Ableism, Xenophobia, and Sexism

samsonian's review against another edition

dark funny mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

i love this book so much its so gay

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder and Blood

Moderate: Racism, Medical content, Injury/Injury detail, Gun violence, and Sexism

Minor: Animal cruelty, Child death, Animal death, and Xenophobia

redheadorganist's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, Blood, Confinement, Death, and Gore

wrensreadingroom's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Minor: Death of parent, Animal death, Death, Misogyny, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, Murder, Racism, Stalking, Terminal illness, Blood, Body horror, Child death, Confinement, Grief, Sexism, and Suicidal thoughts

1quillb's review against another edition

challenging dark slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.0

First of all, I’m very disappointed that Dracula only showed up on probably 40 pages out of the 400 in my book. But to be fair, on most of those other pages absolutely nothing happened. And second of all, that ending? Did he run out of pages and just word-vomit onto the page to meet the deadline?
So, with full and complete offence meant to Abraham “Bram” Stoker: this book sucked. Horribly.

I’m not entirely sure what happened in it, to be honest. Jonathan goes to Dracula’s castle and gets trapped there. A man called Renfield eats spiders but really wants to eat a cat. Mina sits in a churchyard with her girlfriend Lucy. Lucy gets proposed to three times by men she’d literally spoken to one time… it was just random plot point after random plot point, none of which made sense in any sort of context.
And the entire second-half of the book was devoted to… you guess it, absolutely nothing! They decide that vampires are indeed real (though it takes them some time to come to that conclusion even after they see one), and then they go to Dracula’s castle. Why? I don’t know. Dracula wasn’t even there.
Then, for about the last ten pages of the novel, they have a metaphorical snowball fight and start stabbing random Romanians. Obviously the Romanians lost, because they were exhausted from spending the last dozen hours carrying Dracula’s coffin up the mountainside because the Count was too lazy to walk. But luckily “he” dies!
Who is “he”, you may ask? Apparently, it’s Dracula, because later on the characters rejoice in the fact that they killed the vampire, but Bram literally didn’t even write that it was Dracula who died. Nor did he specify if it was Jonathan or Morris who was stabbed by a Romanian. Only in the epilogue is it made clear (a dead man can’t have children, I don’t think).

Overall, this was terrible. I’ve not read anything else by Stoker, so I don’t know if this hideous novel was just a one-off or if it’s actually how he writes, but it sucked regardless. Highly don’t recommend. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Injury/Injury detail, and Murder

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Stalking, Xenophobia, and Kidnapping

Minor: Rape, Sexual harassment, Death of parent, and Self harm

maeverose's review against another edition

dark slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Blood, Confinement, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, and Death

leoniefnk's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

Obviously this book is dated in its views, but as a woman this was hard to read without being offended. Beyond that, I felt no real tension, as it felt rather predictable and with no real risk. Still, I don't regret reading it, as it was interesting to read one of the principle foundations in vampire lore in literature.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death and Blood

Minor: Confinement, Forced institutionalization, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Classism, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, and Violence