Bram Stoker - Reviews

Dracula

Bram Stoker
Public Domain Books
Fiction, Horror
Themes: Classics, Religious Themes, Vampires
***

Description

Englishman Jonathan Harker traveled to Transylvania to meet a client, who had recently purchased property in London. It was a prestigious opportunity for a young solicitor like himself, an auspicious sign for his career and his impending marriage to the lovely Mina. But, deep in the Carpathian mountains, he instead discovers a terror beyond any Christian imagination... a terror bound for his own homeland, against which he stands powerless.

Review

Considered the seminal vampire novel, Dracula creates one of the most terrifying and powerful agents of evil in English literature... and almost smothers him it a stifling, plodding plot that can't advance one step without numerous speeches and brooding internal monologues. Not a single character in this book can do anything without weaving a web of words to explain themselves, often repeating information that was just relayed in the previous chapter. Despite being educated and intelligent people (even the women), they take a long time figuring out that evil is afoot... not helped by Professor Van Helsing, the expert, who deliberately witholds information even as he demands assistance with seemingly insane tasks. (When he asks a man to help him desecrate the corpse of a woman that the man once proposed marriage to, and still won't explain himself, I actually groaned out loud.) Even when everyone's up to speed on vampires, they continue to ignore obvious signs of diabolical influences within their circle. These people are too smart to be this stupid, even to further the plot.
Through the haze of words and repetition, Stoker creates some memorable mental images amid an evocative, gloomy atmosphere. Dracula makes a particularly scary monster, elusive and cunning and resourceful, yet capable of a disarming charisma that lulls victims into his power. I was surprised to find some vampiric traits that I'd taken to be more modern - the sensuality, for instance - already present in this 1897 book. Other abilities and limitations seemed more nebulous, if partially explained by Dracula's own ignorance; one of the more terrifying aspects of the character was how he was still learning and adapting after centuries of undeath. It made him all the more dangerous and unpredictable, even to supposed experts like Van Helsing. If Mina was ultimately more of a symbol of divine perfection than a character, and if the superiority of white Christians grew nauseating by the end, well, I suppose those are just signs of the times in which the story was written.
In the end, I managed to come out with an Okay rating. While Dracula is an iconic monster, the wordy repetition and slow, jerky storyline held it back.

The Jewel of Seven Stars

Bram Stoker
Blackstone Audio
Fiction, Fantasy/Horror
Themes: Classics, Cross-Genre, Curses, Felines, Ghosts and Spirits, Occult, Religious Themes, Undead
***

Description

Young barrister Malcolm Ross only met the lady Margaret Trelawny briefly; though he was enchanted by her beauty, he never thought she'd take him up on his offer to help if ever she needed assistance. The summons in the dead of night, therefore, startles him. Margaret's father, Dr. Abel Trelawny, a noted Egyptologist whose home has more artifacts than anywhere outside the British Museum, has been attacked, and now lies as if in a coma. Stranger still, they discover no sign of an attacker entering or leaving the premises, and there's a note in Abel's desk addressed to her that seems to indicate he expected just this very thing to happen. With an inspector, a doctor, and one of Dr. Trelawny's associates, one Eugene Corbet, Malcolm finds himself drawn into a tale of hidden tombs, lost histories, a blood-red jewel like no other on Earth, and a curse - or possibly prophecy - that has already claimed numerous lives.

Review

This Gothic tale hits all the notes one might expect of a classic horror centered around ancient Egypt (and the Europeans who felt no qualms about tomb raiding in the name of science and cultural superiority, even as the notion of repercussions for said tomb raiding left them uneasy). As was the style of the day, Malcolm is more observer than active participant or driver of the plot, drawn in by his love for Margaret - who, also typical of the era, is presented as being almost of an alien species as a female, something inherently unknowable and weaker and more emotional than a real person (read: man). There's an unsubtle vibe here about what all women evidently truly value above even power and autonomy, not to mention England being the pinnacle of all possible civilizations to which all others should aspire... but Stoker was a writer of his time, with an audience of his time. That aside, he paints some decently vivid settings and occasionally creepy goings-on, though (also typical for the time) nothing that could be said in a single sentence is presented in anything less than a paragraph or more. At some point, the story becomes less about unraveling the secrets and the threat of the curse and more about sitting around twiddling thumbs until something happens. The ending feels like a pulled punch and a total waste of all the painstaking setup (I understand it's a revised version, the 1912 ending, though even the original 1903 ending sounds a little like a long stroll into a short tomb), costing it the half-star the descriptions (and consideration for its age) nearly earned it.