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accidentalspaceexplorer 's review for:
Dracula
by Bram Stoker
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I have owned this copy of Dracula for a long time, and never read it, because I'm not usually a horror or thriller person, but I decided it was either time to read it or get rid of it!
I was really pleasantly surprised by it, honestly - it's much more gripping than I was expecting it to be, and the tropes have not been so well copied that I knew every step of the plot. There were definitely parts that I could really clearly see sign-posted because of Dracula's lasting impact on the genre, but I wasn't expecting the section in England to last as long as it did or be as interesting as it was. And honestly, a lot of the early portion of the novel was pretty hilarious, with modern eyes - the time that Dracula chucks the mirror out the window, the awkwardness of all the men proposing to Lucy on the same day, them subsequently lining up to give Lucy blood transfusions - which really helped me get into the novel. But I do think that Dracula shines best when it is building tension and suspense - all of the long conversations between people about what to do next, and the drawn-out unnerving nights where you don't know whether someone will live or die, and the slow ramp-up where you know Dracula is around but the main characters don't.
As soon as it switches to action, it loses a lot of its grip, because the complicated run-on sentences and padding of the events being related that worked so well to create tension makes it difficult to follow the action sequences. The ending was just a blur of "I guess they're fighting now" that left me pretty confused, and I definitely skipped a lot in the last fifty or so pages because I was tired of the endless talking when the time for action was here.
Other things that bothered me - the casual sexism of talking about Mina as though she has a "man's brain" just because she's smart, the casual disregard for rural people and their traditions as backwards and quaint, some of the asylum stuff, the depiction of criminals as people with "child-brains" which was really weird, and the random scene right at the end where Mina exults about how great money is.
Despite its flaws, however, I think that this classic holds up pretty well, although it is much better in the beginning and middle than it is at the end.
I was really pleasantly surprised by it, honestly - it's much more gripping than I was expecting it to be, and the tropes have not been so well copied that I knew every step of the plot. There were definitely parts that I could really clearly see sign-posted because of Dracula's lasting impact on the genre, but I wasn't expecting the section in England to last as long as it did or be as interesting as it was. And honestly, a lot of the early portion of the novel was pretty hilarious, with modern eyes - the time that Dracula chucks the mirror out the window, the awkwardness of all the men proposing to Lucy on the same day, them subsequently lining up to give Lucy blood transfusions - which really helped me get into the novel. But I do think that Dracula shines best when it is building tension and suspense - all of the long conversations between people about what to do next, and the drawn-out unnerving nights where you don't know whether someone will live or die, and the slow ramp-up where you know Dracula is around but the main characters don't.
As soon as it switches to action, it loses a lot of its grip, because the complicated run-on sentences and padding of the events being related that worked so well to create tension makes it difficult to follow the action sequences. The ending was just a blur of "I guess they're fighting now" that left me pretty confused, and I definitely skipped a lot in the last fifty or so pages because I was tired of the endless talking when the time for action was here.
Other things that bothered me - the casual sexism of talking about Mina as though she has a "man's brain" just because she's smart, the casual disregard for rural people and their traditions as backwards and quaint, some of the asylum stuff, the depiction of criminals as people with "child-brains" which was really weird, and the random scene right at the end where Mina exults about how great money is.
Despite its flaws, however, I think that this classic holds up pretty well, although it is much better in the beginning and middle than it is at the end.
Content Warnings
Minor: Misogyny, Forced institutionalization