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3.26 AVERAGE
3.26 AVERAGE
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
What could have been a wonderfully overwrought supernatural gothic mystery, utterly obfuscated and overloaded by a baffling amount of scientific, historical and philosophical exposition.
Yeah. I think that's where I land on The Jewel of Seven Stars, ultimately. At various points throughout, feeling my attention drifting in the middle of another of Stoker's technical rhapsodies, I would probably have given an even harsher judgment of the thing as a whole, but by the final page, I'd been more or less convinced to forgive it its weaknesses. Without spoiling anything, the climactic sequence crystallises the rather special mood at the heart of the book. Stoker's bracing ending unexpectedly pulls up just shy of what could easily have been a rather trite and unsatisfying moralistic message not really borne out by the story as a whole, instead leaving me with a thoroughly unexpected "what the hell was that" kind of feeling. And mostly in a good way.
Just to be clear, this novel is an utterly shambolic mess of a thing – one of the first-draft-iest professionally published books I've ever read, I think – but the glimmers of greatness it does show are enough to make it a worthwhile curiosity.
Yeah. I think that's where I land on The Jewel of Seven Stars, ultimately. At various points throughout, feeling my attention drifting in the middle of another of Stoker's technical rhapsodies, I would probably have given an even harsher judgment of the thing as a whole, but by the final page, I'd been more or less convinced to forgive it its weaknesses. Without spoiling anything, the climactic sequence crystallises the rather special mood at the heart of the book. Stoker's bracing ending unexpectedly pulls up just shy of what could easily have been a rather trite and unsatisfying moralistic message not really borne out by the story as a whole, instead leaving me with a thoroughly unexpected "what the hell was that" kind of feeling. And mostly in a good way.
Just to be clear, this novel is an utterly shambolic mess of a thing – one of the first-draft-iest professionally published books I've ever read, I think – but the glimmers of greatness it does show are enough to make it a worthwhile curiosity.
informative
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
Gothic horror with Ancient Egyptian elements is a win for me! Its not the best literary work out there, and my guess is that many people wouldn’t enjoy it as I did, but for me it was a great little niche novel. Looked up and read the original 1903 ending & missing chapter, original ending was much better than the revised version.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I want my mummy!
Our narrator, barrister Malcolm Ross, is sent a message by the girl he’s already well on the way to falling in love with, Margaret Trelawny, begging him to come to her aid. Her father has been attacked and seriously injured. Malcolm rushes to her side, as do the doctor and the police. Abel Trelawny’s physical injuries are severe but not life-threatening, but he is in a strange comatose condition. He has, oddly, left instructions on what must be done in just such an eventuality. He must not be removed from his room, which is full of Egyptian treasures he has “collected” from tombs, including several sarcophagi. And two people must watch over him each night. So Malcolm offers to stay at the house, and helps with the watching while carrying on his wooing. Slowly he and Margaret learn that her father has been studying one mummy in particular, Queen Tera, and believes that she had magical skills. He believes that she intends to come back from the dead, and Trelawny intends to help her…
This would have made a great short story or novella, but at full-novel length it’s incredibly over-stretched and repetitive. It’s well written, of course, and the narration from Simon Vance is great – it may in fact have been the only thing that got me through all the repetition. There are parts that are very good, like the flashback to when Trelawny and his associate stole – sorry, I mean “collected” – the contents of Tera’s tomb, including Tera herself! Then there are parts where Malcolm tells us for the umpteenth time all about how sweet his Margaret is, to the point where I was about ready to put an Egyptian curse on both of them myself.
However my desire to know what would happen when Trelawny carried out his experiment held my interest throughout. Who doesn’t love a resurrected mummy?? But what an anti-climax! After eight hours of listening, the experiment is packed into the last quarter of an hour, and the actual climax takes about two minutes! And I don’t mean to quibble, but the happy ending seemed wildly inappropriate to the big build-up! I had already learned from another review that the story apparently had two endings, so after I’d finished I did a bit of checking. It turns out the original ending from 1903 was far from happy – in fact, it was so bleak the publisher refused to reissue the book in 1912 unless Stoker altered it. So he did, and now the happy ending is the one most commonly used. I found a copy of the original online, and while it certainly suits the tone better and is more Stoker-ish, it’s just as rushed and tacked on at the last moment as the later ending. I seem to remember complaining about the abrupt way Dracula finishes too, so maybe it was a deliberate stylistic choice of Stoker’s to end stories this way, but it felt like an unsatisfactory pay-off after a lengthy (though mostly enjoyable) listen. 3½ stars for me, so rounded up.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
Our narrator, barrister Malcolm Ross, is sent a message by the girl he’s already well on the way to falling in love with, Margaret Trelawny, begging him to come to her aid. Her father has been attacked and seriously injured. Malcolm rushes to her side, as do the doctor and the police. Abel Trelawny’s physical injuries are severe but not life-threatening, but he is in a strange comatose condition. He has, oddly, left instructions on what must be done in just such an eventuality. He must not be removed from his room, which is full of Egyptian treasures he has “collected” from tombs, including several sarcophagi. And two people must watch over him each night. So Malcolm offers to stay at the house, and helps with the watching while carrying on his wooing. Slowly he and Margaret learn that her father has been studying one mummy in particular, Queen Tera, and believes that she had magical skills. He believes that she intends to come back from the dead, and Trelawny intends to help her…
This would have made a great short story or novella, but at full-novel length it’s incredibly over-stretched and repetitive. It’s well written, of course, and the narration from Simon Vance is great – it may in fact have been the only thing that got me through all the repetition. There are parts that are very good, like the flashback to when Trelawny and his associate stole – sorry, I mean “collected” – the contents of Tera’s tomb, including Tera herself! Then there are parts where Malcolm tells us for the umpteenth time all about how sweet his Margaret is, to the point where I was about ready to put an Egyptian curse on both of them myself.
However my desire to know what would happen when Trelawny carried out his experiment held my interest throughout. Who doesn’t love a resurrected mummy?? But what an anti-climax! After eight hours of listening, the experiment is packed into the last quarter of an hour, and the actual climax takes about two minutes! And I don’t mean to quibble, but the happy ending seemed wildly inappropriate to the big build-up! I had already learned from another review that the story apparently had two endings, so after I’d finished I did a bit of checking. It turns out the original ending from 1903 was far from happy – in fact, it was so bleak the publisher refused to reissue the book in 1912 unless Stoker altered it. So he did, and now the happy ending is the one most commonly used. I found a copy of the original online, and while it certainly suits the tone better and is more Stoker-ish, it’s just as rushed and tacked on at the last moment as the later ending. I seem to remember complaining about the abrupt way Dracula finishes too, so maybe it was a deliberate stylistic choice of Stoker’s to end stories this way, but it felt like an unsatisfactory pay-off after a lengthy (though mostly enjoyable) listen. 3½ stars for me, so rounded up.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Interesting fiction. I need to learn more about Bram Stoker to see what made him want to write on such subjects.
Full Review Below:
http://apolloreborn.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-jewel-of-seven-stars.html
http://apolloreborn.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-jewel-of-seven-stars.html
