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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
dark
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
3.5 stars Sheridan La Fanu's collection of 5 short horror stories is throughly enjoyable. He's an old school author who doesn't get enough modern attention. The collection was good fun. The story Green Tea featured a demonic monkey while also suggesting that the excess consumption of green tea was responsible for the affliction. The familiar, with all due respect to MR James who thought it was the best ever, was just alright. I felt the pacing robbed it of any real urgency. Justice Hard bottle was an excellent bit of spookery. The Room in Dragon Volant was a bit overlong but a pleasant mystery. Carmilla, the OG sapphic vampire was the standout story in this collection and really is a must read for any fan of classic horror.
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Bought this book to read carmilla and honestly I loved it. Absolutely lived up to expectations. However the other stories were boring and not very engaging.
Ugh - the first two stories in this collection were absolutely tedious... so much so that I can't continue. There is very little spark to the writing, nothing interesting happening, vague or silly resolutions (drinking green tea will make you see crazy monkeys...). There are so many good books from this period that I have no qualms about ditching this one.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
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:
No
'Carmilla' alone would rate much higher. 'The Room in the Dragon Volant' is good. The others were a bit too short to be really compelling.
challenging
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Aslında bu kitabı Green Tea için almıştım ama sonunda en sevdiğim hikaye The Room in Le Dragon Volant oldu. Green Tea ve The Familiar hikayeleri de oldukça iyiydi ama.
Obviously some of the five tales were better than others - I most enjoyed the Room in Le Dragon Volant and Carmilla. It can be hard to appreciate how new and groundbreaking these were when first published, as when you read it now it can seem cliched due to how ubiquitous some of the ideas and plotlines have later become - but these are some of the stories that started it all. You can certainly see that this had an influence on Bram Stoker, amongst others. He took the gothic supernatural conventions but from a psychological angle was able to make things new.
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
It took me a month to work through this, as the language was very dense, but I found it very understandable as long as I put the work in. As a wlw, I feel like I’m supposed to pick Carmilla as my favorite, but it is actually second to The Room in the Dragon Volont. It was like a fun, low-stakes slice of Count of Monte Cristo, which I adore, with a narrator dumb enough to make Albert look like a MENSA candidate. To me that was the most horrific, despite no supernatural elements, because it’s so clear to the reader what is happening while the narrator just digs his own grave deeper and deeper.
Carmilla was great and so explicitly queer. If anything I think it suffers from a modern lense because even though I know it pre-dated every other modern vampire story, they draw so heavily from it that it feels extremely familiar going in.
Carmilla was great and so explicitly queer. If anything I think it suffers from a modern lense because even though I know it pre-dated every other modern vampire story, they draw so heavily from it that it feels extremely familiar going in.
Good collection of stories which I throughly enjoyed. I had read “Uncle Silas” and really liked it, and also enjoyed this. Great atmosphere and spooky fun. Will be reading more by LeFanu.
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced