Dracula

Rating:
Summary: Intense
Review: Stoker's Dracula is in the unusual narrative form of the journal entries, news clippings, telegrams and letters between the unfortunate band of people drawn up in Dracula's wake as he attempts to trade in his life in the old country for the teeming streets of London. With its unusual presentation, this novel must have been the Blair Witch of its day and has thoroughly withstood the test of time. The journals blend seamlessly into short narratives and dialogues and, with the many voices and perspectives, build an undeniable tension throughout the book. The end lacks no potency just because you think you know who is going to win in the end.

The movie form of Stoker's Dracula is close but no cigar. Though I sort of like the Hollywood added Dracula/Mina romance angle, it is not present in the book. Jonathon Harker, a solicitor from London and the fiancée of Wilhemina (Mina), is trapped in Dracula's castle after delivering the papers involved in the purchase of Carfax Abbey by the Count. Whiling away the time until Jonathon's return, Mina spends time with Lucy Westenra, who is not quite the coquette she is made out to be in the movies though she does have three suitors: John Seward who runs the sanitarium that abuts Carfax Abbey, Quincey Morris (an American adventurer), and Lord Goldalming (Arthur) whose proposal she has accepted. When she falls mysteriously ill, Seward is called in who calls for his old mentor and professor, Van Helsing. Jonathon finally surfaces again in a foreign city requiring Mina's nursing, leaving the three former suitors and Van Helsing to battle for Lucy's soul against the Count. When Jonathon's journal from the castle is eventually integrated into the experiences of the four men, an alarming picture becomes clear and they are vowed to pursue and destroy the monster. Stakes rise when Dracula attempts to use Mina against the tribe and their failure would ultimately mean the forfeiture of Mina's soul. Pardon the pun but blood runs high as the men pursue Dracula even back to his own castle while Mina struggles to maintain her gentler nature.

I was very impressed with how compelling a read this was given the narrative form and the differing conceptions of horror over the centuries. The eroticism has since paled, I think, as other authors have pushed that envelope a great deal farther since then but it seems an excellent snapshot of Victorian struggles against the baser natures of mankind.

Rating:
Summary: Fun late night reading!
Review: Dracula was fantastic and that is even with the knowledge that the good Count was going to be a vampire...Imagine how fun it would have been to read this book NOT knowing what a monster he truely was...Anyhow...this book is still worth the read...the slow build up and torment that Jonathan Harker faces as he is trapped in Draculas castle... the resilient fight Van Helsing and "the gang" put up to save poor Lucy from the mysterious blood loss she faces nightly...the frantic chance that is the climax of this masterpeice... Anyone who loves to be terrified and entertained should save this one for a dark and stormy night...light a candle and take the very gory trip to Transylvania...

Rating:
Summary: An All Time Favorite
Review: I usually don't do reviews but simply had to in this case. I read this book the first time when I was 8 or 9 and it scared me so badly I piled all my stuffed animals over me in case Dracula came after me in the night. I absolutely loved it and to this day I enjoy it every time I re-read it. One reviewer complained about Stoker's "overwhelming message of women + sex = way too scary for any decent man to handle" being pretty annoying. The interesting thing about her complaint this is exactly what got the book written during the time of Queen Victoria and society was very repressed. Women were getting out of the house and beginning to be independent -- some of them actually took jobs. The concept of women and sex being scary today may seem outdated but when this book was written, it was a very real fear in Victorian society. Instead of finding this concept annoying it should be realized that it's very educational of a particular time in history. People really thought like this and this is some of what gives the book its power.

Further, is this any different from the current batch of horror movies that always has the girl who has sex killed by the monster? Or clad only in a flimsy negligee? At any rate, Dracula is a truly terrific book and one of my all time favorites.

Rating:
Summary: The Terror that will Live on
Review: Excellent! This book has captivated readers for 107 years. There is not a dull moment. This book has religious significance, action, and a classic battle between good and evil. There is not a single person, young or old, who would not enjoy this book.

Rating:
Summary: boring, but important
Review: Is 'Dracula,' a classic because it's really that great of a book? Or is it because of the mass influence it's had on culture? I'm going with the latter.

I found it, overall, to be a pretty boring book, our glimpses of Dracula are slim, the only interesting narratives are those of Lucy & Mina, & Stoker's overwhelming message of women + sex = way too scary for any decent man to handle, is pretty annoying.

So read it because it's a classic, & because without it legions of great movies & books may have never been written, but if you're looking for excitement, stop at go.

Rating:
Summary: Very good starter
Review: This is a great book to get adolesent kids started with reading. For those kids who are not interested in reading this is a good choice to help them get interested. This is a classic to which most kids and people for that matter already know the general story. So for kids who are unsure about reading, or feel that they don't always understand what they are reading (for lack of attention) this would be a great book to start them off. This version is complete and unabridged giving the reader the full detail of Bran Stoker's original classic. Cover to cover this is one of the best and most known horror stories ever printed. And i would fully recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Dracula, one of the best books that I have ever read
Review: Dracula is one of the best horror books that I have ever read. I highly reccomend this anyone who enjoys a good horror book. The book takes place in the late ninteenth century in Transylvania. with Jonathon Harker going to finalize a real estate sale. Then from there the fun ensues from people getting their blood sucked by Count Dracula to Dracula getting killed.This book shows what a genius that Bram Stoker really is. Stoker portrays pure horror like no other writer I have ever read and can convey raw emotions of sheer terror. So if you enjoy blood and gore then you will love this book

Rating:
Summary: Dracula-Sweetheart of Darkness
Review: If you are looking for a great book to read, Bram Stoker's Dracula could be your perfect choice.
The plot alone gives enough good reason to read this book. To start with, it's a classic. You can never go wrong with a classic. It's books like this that enrich your literary reading. Along with being a classic, Dracula demands that you take time to sit and read. It requires thought. By doing this it doesn't make the book seem too easy and a waste of time and effort. At the same time it's not too hard to understand. Dracula is great for all you out there who enjoy the supernatural. This is one that lets you escape and experience some of the creepy yet exciting events that do not occur in our everyday life, or world for that matter.
Bram Stoker offers some intersesting characters in his book. It is hard to become bored with with a particular character throughout the entire book. Plus, if a madman that eats flies doesn't intrest you, then I don't think that anything will. Such charateristics really give the characters of Dracula stand out personalities. A madman, a prisoner, two doctors, a woman being turned into a vampire, the list goes on and on. These are merely labels compared to how the book presents them. It is easy to get to know a certain character so well that you can relate to them, or somewhat of their experience. This really helps to get into the book.
The theme of Dracula really fits nicely with the plot and characters. First off I must give my satisfaction with the writing style. Not many authors use letters, diary entries, logs, and newspaper clippings to tell their story. This writing style really explores every character's point of view. It really helps the reader to know what is going on throughout the book. If that doesn't get the reader involed in the book, then the setting will. It goes from creepy castles to ships with dead men to civilization and so on. Without the setting it just wouldn't be the same. The setting really helps to establish a good basis for the plot and the characters. The genre of this book is considered to be gothic. When reading the book I noticed that it fits the five characteristics of a gothic piece of literature. It has a creepy setting, a damsel in distress, the supernatural, and gore. The wonderful gothic setting of old victorian England is the perfect environment for this delightfully dark book.

Rating:
Summary: The best way to absorb the Dracula myth...
Review: Bram Stoker had absolutely no idea just what sort of monster he was creating. I refer not to his title character, but to the book itself. It is highbrow enough that scholars and literary types feel the need to include it (if, perhaps, toward the bottom) on their lists of exemplary 19th-century popular literature, yet lowbrow enough to interest the common reader. This is not a slight to the "common reader"; I'm one, too, and I tire of dense, obnoxiously self-important prose. Stoker's goal was not to write "important" books. He knew exactly who his readers were - real people, not literary critics. That he managed to rise somewhat above even his own expectations with Dracula is a testament to his often latent skill. Stephen King has benefited from the seriousness with which some critics have taken Dracula, by often being taken more seriously than he perhaps deserves. King knows this, too; he has often described himself, tongue in cheek, as the McDonald's or General Motors of horror fiction. Stoker, while never as consistently successful as King, might have applied a similar description to himself.

Dracula, though written at the end of the 19th century, seems a fairly modern book, at it moves swiftly and employs suspense techniques often associated with more recent books and films (i.e., the shifting point-of-view, "cross-cutting", if you will, between different first-person narratives to build tension). It works exceedingly well, providing a model and formula followed by many successors - though often with less impressive results.

The central villain - Count Dracula himself - is quite rightly absent from the stage a good deal of the time, so that he may grow in the imagination of the reader as his invisible presence permeates nearly every page. He is always just on the other of the window, door, or wall, or just across the street - his nefarious intentions influencing events as the book draws inexorably toward confrontation with the monster.

Dracula's flaw is also, in a way, its virtue: there are no evil human characters. Almost everyone is quite heroic and selfless in a sort of two-dimensional way. It is not that the characters are underdeveloped (as many complain), but that they tend to be representative of human beings' more enviable qualities, and therefor seem less realistic to the modern reader. But, then, one has to realize that the entire book is composed of diaries, letters, and faux-news clippings. I get a sense of subtle humor, of the "unreliable narrator" sort, from some passages of Dracula, as characters make themselves out to be more chivalrous, loving, and trusting than, perhaps, they actually were during the "real" events they describe. For example, one can only infer Dr. Seward's actual response to Van Helsing's request for autopsy knives so he can decapitate his beloved Lucy's corpse and take out her heart before burial! Reading between the lines, Seward's description of the event in his diary becomes darkly funny as he struggles to maintain a sense of 19th-century British decorum while relating the scene. His description of Van Helsing's anguish gives us a clue: Seward seems to suspect his mentor may be going off the deep end, and his expressions of blind trust in the old man may be a way of placating him.

Dracula's greatest virtue, though, is its well-oiled plot. It's an impressive machine that still functions marvelously more than a century after its making. It is a mean, sharp skeleton fleshed out with numerous horrific digressions (the episodes with Dracula's "brides", the log of the Demeter, the "bloofer lady", etc.) that serve as tiles in a mosaic gradually completing the rather lean narrative that develops from them. Compare it with, say, Peter Straub's rather bloated attempt at the same technique in Floating Dragon, a rather messy and unsatisfying novel with isolated moments of brilliance, and you start to realize what a taut, precise engine Stoker really fashioned.

What keeps me from giving Dracula five stars is that it's necessarily limited by its own goals. Truly great popular novels somehow manage to tell exciting stories while also reaching more deeply than they pretend. They reverberate on levels well above (and below) their apparent target. While many have read exotic psychosexual interpretations into Dracula, I find it shallows out rather quickly once it has served up its scares and menace. Yes, there is a genuine (and intended) erotic subtext, but it fails to be profoundly illuminating, since it was never intended to be. It serves its disquieting purpose, and then departs, rather than lingering. That's how Stoker designed his effects, and they work perfectly. He set out to write a good four-star novel, and he did.

A hundred years later, it's still good four-star novel, popular as ever, as well it deserves. Excellent work, and worth a place in your library.

Rating:
Summary: Uber-cool
Review: Now, I haven't read all of the books in the world. But I do know that out of all the ones that I have, I would say that Dracula has to be in my top ten. There is no one cooler than this guy, he can fly like a bat, run like a wolf, crawl like a gecko, and he never dies if supplied. The guy is just a beast. In addition to the coolness factor that this guy has, the book is suspenseful, contains fleshed out characters with a kickin' storyline. How can you just not feel like you are running scared like Harker through the Dracula mansion? Outstanding in every way. This is definitely reccommended.

Hoo-ah!