Reviews with content warning for Animal cruelty - Dracula

average person eats 3 flies a year" factoid actualy just statistical error. average person eats 0 flies per year. Flies Renfield, who lives in an asylum & eats over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted

Okay now that that's out of my system, I have to confess, I read this book is a rather unorthodox fashion, as part of the Dracula Daily emails, whereby the letters in the book are emailed out to readers on the corresponding dates. It's a fun idea for an epistolary novel and I found that it suited the format well. However, did I manage to keep up with those emails? Heck no! In fact, I only managed to finish it now, a month after the book has ended, because I started copying the emails into a text-to-speech bot and listening to months at a time.

The above being said, I really enjoyed my first experience with Dracula! I especially loved the characters of Mina and Van Helsing, and Jonathan "wifeguy" Harker gets a mention too. Although the book some times suffered for it's period typical Christianity and sexism, it was refreshing how Stoker broke free of that at times and allowed Mina to be more than just the wife in jeopardy. Like every man in this book, I too would give my life for Mina Harker at the drop of a hat.

In term of the ending, it did feel somewhat anti-climatic. I understand that an outright fight between Dracula and the party would have ended in Dracula's survival, but I was expecting more than just a quick brawl with a group of unnamed (and unimportant) men and them stabbing the Count as he slept.

Content Warnings

orchidlilly's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous 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

3.0

Dracula's horror has a kind of slow burn that makes it very hard to capture in movie form. This also makes it, for those of us who are used to more thriller-like horror, or for those who are already aware of vampires as a concept, a bit of a slow read. There are times when the book drags on, most notably the newspaper sections and legal proceedings. It is rife with that classic British brand of racism, which while expected, is no more pleasant than it would be now. It also has a good bit of that 19th century sexism which is annoying, if only because of how repetitive it becomes, and how much of a hindrance to the plot it is.
All in all, an interesting read, but a good bit of the charm and suspense is lost to the changing principals of time.

Content Warnings

appurusakura's review against another edition

Go to review page

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? No

2.75

Content Warnings

babyleo's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

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

4.0

Content Warnings

oddduck's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark funny tense slow-paced

5.0

As much as I enjoyed the actual book, I do feel I have to acknowledge that the experience of reading this book influenced my rating. I read this as Dracula Daily, which is a format I highly recommend. The entire story was put in chronological order (helpful for my brain), sent through email (very convenient), and was (mostly) small chunks of text (very manageable for me to tackle in one sitting). Sure, it took six months to read, there were a lot of dead spots with no Dracula (book) action whatsoever, and some days you'd get one sentence while others you'd get 50 pages (October 3 is an outlier and should not be counted), but man if I didn't have a blast. I genuinely can’t remember the last time I had this much fun reading a book.

Looking at the criticisms I have of it, this book would normally be rated lower, but I do tend to give classics a bit more leeway and there’s one aspect that was done so well that I feel it makes up for some of the deficiencies: this is a horror novel - a classic of the genre and foundational in vampire literature - and despite knowing the major plot point going in (vampires), it still manages to be scary.

Good news: unless you are a die-hard vampire fan before reading this, you’re probably going to learn new things about vampires! Personally, I am extremely disappointed in vampire writers for letting the ability to crawl on the wall like a lizard fall out of fashion as a vampire skill. This is clearly the coolest vampire ability and our society has made a grave oversight by ignoring it.

But back to the horrors. Going in, I kind of thought this wouldn’t be that scary, since I already know that Count Dracula is a vampire. That’s where all the shock comes from, right? Wrong. I would actually argue that knowing Dracula is a vampire going into this book makes it scarier, which I know sounds odd.

Take one of my favorite sequences: the log from the Demeter. For the 19th century reader, every part of this sequence is terrifying. They have no idea what’s happening. All they know is that something is very wrong. For the modern day reader, we either know immediately or very quickly figure out that Dracula is on the ship and we know he’s a vampire, so we have an explanation for what’s happening. And yet it’s still terrifying, because we know that everyone on that ship is going to die. They’re being hunted and they know it, but they can’t save themselves.

The horror of Dracula is supposed to come from the Count and what he does. Knowing that he’s a vampire and that he’s defeated at the end makes him less terrifying, but it doesn’t reduce the overall horror of the book. Whether or not you know the Count is a vampire, he’s still scary, and also the situation itself is terrifying.

We make fun of people in horror movies for making stupid decisions - don’t split up! Don’t go investigate the weird noise! Don’t open the locked door! - and sure, some of them are genuinely lacking in common sense. And it would be easy to apply that thinking to Jonathan. But when you think about his job and financial situation, it becomes harder to say those things, and that’s what is so good about this story. It doesn’t hinge on one aspect of horror to succeed, giving the reader a more well rounded sense of dread the further in they get. Not only is this smart storytelling, it’s also part of why this book has endured as a classic, I think.

But despite how much I enjoyed this novel, I do have some criticisms as well.

To start, I feel that Dracula’s sexy vampire lady roommates were underutilized. They don’t even have names. They showed up to menace Jonathan and they were there to tempt Mina at the end, but otherwise we don’t even think about them. Very disappointing.

On a related note, I Really Dislike how Stoker describes lady vampires. There is a reason I call Dracula’s roommates “sexy vampire women”. It becomes especially obvious after Lucy is turned. Prior to this, she’s described as beautiful, but in an innocent way (which feels infantilizing, which is also gross, but not the point right now). After her death, she’s still beautiful, but now it’s in a sexy temptress kind of way. Stoker gets a frankly uncomfortable amount of use out of the word “voluptuous”. Mina later gets a similar treatment, and it enrages me. Period typical sexism and misogyny sure, but holy crap I was ready to learn necromancy over this.

Same feelings for the period-typical racism, religious bigotry, and other assorted Nonsense. The Nonsense (encompassing everything listed and everything I forgot) is what makes old books hard to read, for me. Understanding the language isn’t usually that hard (though let me tell you, reading some of what Quincey Morris said, especially early on, was a Challenge in the most baffling way and I flat out gave up on Mr. Swales), but dealing with what is said, and how they think they’re right, is infuriating.

Dr. Seward and Van Helsing made me scream into a pillow a lot, for the above reasons, but also just for being themselves. Dr. Seward was probably my least favorite character. I found him very annoying and anytime he talked about his patient, Renfield, I wanted to stab him in the spleen. He talks about Renfield like he’s an animal in a zoo and he genuinely sounds like an evil scientist at times. I struggle to think that he cares about helping Renfield for his sake and not to further his own career. So glad Lucy did not pick this guy.

I wanted to strangle Van Helsing pretty much any time he appeared, because he is apparently incapable of just speaking plainly. One of the few times I liked Seward was when he called Van Helsing out on this (but it only happened once). Every conversation with Van Helsing involved went on at least twice as long as it needed to. And they had probably three times as many conversations as they needed to because Van Helsing just. Wouldn’t give them all the information at once??? So many of my notes are just things like “Van Helsing, I am begging you, stop being cryptic. You literally sound so suspicious.” and “Okay, I swear, if Van Helsing doesn’t fess up to Mina by the end of this conversation I’m going to scream.” and of course “Van Helsing what the hell dude. Use more words.” Someone on tumblr said Van Helsing thinks he’s the brave hero of this story, and they were so right.

Related to the issue of Van Helsing, but not necessarily a criticism, I will not be swayed from the belief that if Mina had been given all of the information from the start, she would have solved all of the problems before we even reached the halfway point of the book. I recognize that this would have been a much harder story to pull off successfully, but you will not convince me that this isn’t the reason that Mina gets so sidelined in the final chase sequence (or, perhaps more accurately, why the count has to bite Mina before he flees England). Mina was my favorite character, so anytime Jonathan talked about how much he loves his wife I was right there with him, and this is why I’m so disappointed that she did not get a bigger role in the end.

This was an Experience for sure and I had a fantastic time. Highly recommend this format and story for anyone interested in vampires or thinking about reading Dracula.

As a bonus, because I had a great time keeping a reading journal for this book and because so many objectively bonkers things happen in it, please enjoy a (very) brief selection from my notes, without context:

ART promising the hot goss!!
Jonathan that is a terrible plan, but also it is one that I cannot believe you didn't try sooner???
Everything about this was disturbing. No thanks.
We stan Mina, the only one with any kind of sense in this book.
Literally the only thing preventing Lucy and Mina from being a couple is that Bram Stoker lived in an era of homophobia. And also cowardice.
Oh I know what this is reminding me of. Rabies.
GIRL THAT IS NOT A DREAM
Wow okay no more Mr. Nice Vampire
This book is about the power of friendship and a really good nap
I am once again asking why women who become vampires remain young and beautiful, but Dracula, a man, became old and decrepit.
All the talk of snow is making me think: They survived Dracula, but can they survive. . . Mother Nature? And then this becomes a survival story lol

Content Warnings

meganpbennett's review against another edition

Go to review page

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.

Content Warnings

More...