Reviews with content warning for Body horror - The Garden of Evil

Reviews tagging 'Body horror'

The Garden of Evil by Bram Stoker

82 reviews

ominous_teapot's review against another edition

4.0

dark mysterious fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

Content Warnings

nightfell's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous challenging dark informative mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

Dracula is told from the diary entries of the different characters throughout the story, and it was so refreshing to get different point of views, especially because I liked all the characters. Normally in classics it's told from one point of view, which can become quite monotonous, so it really helped the pace of the story. However, the book had slow pacing, especially at the beginning, but once I passed the 150 page mark the story really developed, and it became exciting and thrilling.

I loved all the different gothic/horror elements Dracula included, as I was only expecting the vampire element. There was asylums with mentally ill people, hypnosis, sleepwalking, missing children, cemeteries, breaking into graves, castles and of course Vampires.

I liked all the characters, and the relationships that grew between them, especially Mina and Lucy, Van Helsing and John Seward, and Van Helsing and Mina. Mina is so smart and cute and Van Helsing and Seward were all my favourite characters. Jonathan Harker's journals at the beginning were so funny and fun to read, and I like how they were the foundation for the rest of the story. It's so cute how they all read each other's diaries, and I liked how they all became a sort of found family in the second half of the book.

Overall, it was a good book, and I would recommend to anyone who is up for a 400 page classic, and who likes Vampires and books with a gothic setting.

Content Warnings

nokikana's review against another edition

3.5

dark emotional slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

Content Warnings

margztgz's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

If vampire bad why sexy???

Read this for my classic monsters class, this novel feels like an epic tale that is long and laborious yet with some beautiful writing. Mina pissed me off. Literally everything seems to go back to gender roles and sex, but it's brilliantly done.

Content Warnings

miagw962's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

The world seems full of good men, even if there are monsters in it.

I LOVED EVERY MINUTE OF THIS. I enjoyed Dracula sooooo much! I am so happy! This is exactly what I wanted, something spooky and gothic that is thrilling, easy to read and has good characters. Such a classic story and, again, THE CHARACTERS. I will tell you right now I loved every single person. I felt that everyone was so distinctive and likeable (except maybe Dracula himself but he was still a king) and I don't think I've ever felt a love like that for characters from classic literature ever! Like, I am passionate about it! I just feel like this is such an accessible book and can be read in so many different ways, as a character study of individual people and their relation to the situation, but also in countless other ways. There are a lot of great reviews and I'm sure articles that go into detail about Dracula, further than surface level. But the thing is, you can also read it at that surface level! And I feel like that's kind of what I did. I just wanted to be entertained and freaked out and I was. I loved the tone of this book - horror contrasted with the hopefulness of our main ensemble. Just so good. I understand why it's stood the test of time and why Count Dracula himself is such an iconic character.

Content Warnings

lillythebluepaladin's review against another edition

4.25

adventurous dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: N/A

This was a great, BUT LOOONG, read! I did really enjoy most of the book, even though I skipped a certain zoo scene, you can too, it's not that important.
It is a very old book, so the treatment of its female characters were... interesting. Definetly don't expect some Mulan type of badass female characters, because those poor women weren't allowed to do so, but expect to love them none the less!
It's definetly not a very scary story, but a fun one to read, and I can definetly recommend for others who want to read the classics like me <3

OKAY, MINA AND VAN HELSING WERE THE BEST CHARACTERS OF THIS BOOK! I loved them so much! Mina and her clever brain and her trains, and Van Helsing and his serious "vampire stuff is happening" face", I loved them a lot. The main men and their "oh no, you soft tiny woman thing, we most protect you from the TERROR of KNOWING THINGS oh nOOO" attitude towards Mina AND Lucy was extremely annoying at times, but I guess it was understandable.
Morris was cleeeaaarlyyy written by a man who has never met an American in his life, but the human manifestation of Texas was a fun character, and I was so sad when he died :(
One thing I'm not sure about are the Romani, the romanians, and the hebrew character... I AM WHITE, SO I HAVE NO WORD IN SAYING IF THEY'RE APPROPRIATE OR NOT, but I got some feelings, so definetly check up on that before reading, just in case <3

Content Warnings

mars2k's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous dark hopeful mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

If Dracula had ended after chapter four, I might have given it a full five stars. The first fifty-odd pages are undoubtedly the best part of the book. Jonathan Harker is trapped in Dracula’s castle, and slowly realising that he is trapped. The atmosphere is tense and eerie. Both Harker and Dracula are interesting and well-developed characters, and the interactions between them are great.

I want to talk for a moment about Count Dracula specifically. In the first four chapters he is depicted as (seemingly) kind, hospitable, careful, and emotionally intelligent, but there’s something sinister about him too. There’s also quite a bit of queer subtext. Dracula is a complicated and sympathetic character at this point, but later his characterisation changes drastically and he ends up being reduced to a cartoonish villain with very little depth. He also becomes a much less prominent part of the narrative – he’s not entirely absent, but he takes on more of a peripheral role. I wish we’d seen more of him. (Interestingly, this is the exact reverse of my view regarding Frankenstein’s monster)

Of course, I must address the elephant in the room – the bigotry. Dracula is a character crafted from several antisemitic tropes. His hooked nose is emphasised many times, and there are parallels between his vampirism (specifically his preying on children) and blood libel. Something else that stands out when viewing the character through this lens is the way he is presented as both an immensely powerful mastermind and a weakling with a “child-brain” – proto-fascist rhetoric, perhaps? The book as a whole is riddled with xenophobia, racism, ableism, and sexism. In many ways it’s a product of its time. Its age doesn’t excuse these problematic elements, but it does offer some context at least.

I was led to believe that Dracula is slow-paced but for a gothic horror story it’s actually very quick. It’s relatively well-written, and the epistolary format is executed well. Excellent build-up to an anticlimactic ending. There’s so much more I could say about the characters and the story (both praise and criticism) but I think I’ll wrap things up here.

Overall I did enjoy Dracula and I’m glad I finally sat down and read it. It’s certainly not without its flaws but I think it’s worth reading if you haven’t already.

“The last I saw of Count Dracula was his kissing his hand to me, with a red light of triumph in his eyes, and with a smile that Judas in hell might be proud of.”

Content Warnings