Reviews with content warning for Drug use - Dracula

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Dracula by Bram Stoker

10 reviews

mattiedancer's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense slow-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? Yes

3.75

Writing: 4⭐️/5

While Stoker is a fantastic writer (the book is a classic for a reason), so much attention was given to the smallest details that the book dragged in portions where it didn’t need to. I thoroughly believe this is a situation in which the prominent style has changed so much over the years that it’s hard to appreciate the detail without feeling it’s too much and unnecessary. That being said when the writing hit, it hit strong and fast, making it an overall well-written read.

Characters: 4.5⭐️/5

I did enjoy the development of the characters. While the women, though interesting, were reduced in many ways to trope-like behaviours, the characters did feel alive and vibrant during the tale. In many moments, I appreciated the attention to detail for each character, as well as the uniqueness provided by their own voice, which always came through in the writing.

Plot: 4⭐️/5

**SPOILERS HERE**

It’s the tale of Dracula – the original vampire. And yet, during the climax of the story, I felt disappointed in how little attention was given to his death. I felt the story dragged so much in sections that the plot suffered, the events pulled too far apart to keep enough tension present – or as much tension as I wanted. That being said, the story was still entertaining and intriguing, just long-winded and slow-paced.

Who Should Read This Book?

Fans of classic fiction and gothic literature
Those looking to appreciate a slow read

Content Warnings?

Misogyny, sexism, classism, death of a parent, death, illness, toxic relationships, blood, gore, death of a child, murder

Post-Reading Rating: 3⭐️/5

I felt let down by the ending, personally, even if it did wrap things up relatively nicely.

Final Rating: 3.75⭐️/5

Content Warnings

thedandybrambler's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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orchidlilly's review against another edition

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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.

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divine529's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense 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? Yes

Dracula is and probably will always be one of my favorite books.

I read along with the Dracula Daily crew this time around and had an absolute blast reading it this way.

From the characters to the plot and overall story it's just a fantastic book on all fronts (as well as an excellent Gothic novel).

Definitely a book I'll revisit many times again.

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oddduck's review against another edition

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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

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puttingwingsonwords's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced

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

5.0

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emeh's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense slow-paced

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

4.25

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rory_john14's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

4.0

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nightfell's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark informative mysterious sad tense slow-paced

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

4.0

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.

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brnineworms's review against another edition

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adventurous dark hopeful mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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.”

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