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A review by ohnomoresnow
The Jewel of Seven Stars by Bram Stoker
3.0
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.