Dracula

Rating:
Summary: Just a Great Book
Review: I'm not goin to say much, I hate when good books are given away. If you like Dracula, or like reading weird well put together books; then read this. Bram Stroker was a very talented writer.

Rating:
Summary: Review of 1996, Big Radio Players Edition
Review: STORY: A naive young Englishman travels to Transylvania to do business with a client, Count Dracula. After showing his true and terrifying colors, Dracula boards a ship for England in search of new, fresh blood. Unexplained disasters begin to occur in the streets of London before the mystery and the evil doer are finally put to rest.

MY FEEDBACK:
1) SETTING: The eerie Transylvania with fogs and local superstitions that keep people indoors on many nights. England with its many alleyways and secluded estates allow for characters to find themselves in predicaments where they are far from help. The settings work very well for this story.

2) CHARACTERS: The cast of characters are all believable and interesting. Van Helsing involvement in the story is original and enjoyable. Everyone of the close-minded British of the time stay true to character and add a level of conflict and frustration on the reader because it is hard to imagine people being so stupid, yet you know in your heart they were (are) like that.

3) STORY: I knocked this down a star because a large majority of the story is in the form of reading journals. These endless reports almost feel like droning exposition and leave the reader yawning from sleepiness and boredom. I'm glad I listened to the Big Radio Players version of this as the audio format allowed for wonderful eerie music, great special effect sounds, and a cast of different characters and voices that matched well with the casting of the story.

Even though this is my first time reading/listening to this story, it has been overdone in media so much that as each scene was revealed I knew what was going to happen. Thus, this over exposure to the story I believe detracted from the enjoyment I would have had if I was totally new to the content and unfamiliar with the legend of Dracula. Thus I had to knock it down a star because the story was predictable, but no fault of its own.
I had to raise it up another star because Stoker does capture some wonderful scenes of suspense, especially in the beginning of the story. His choice of description demonstrates a wonderful ability to say exactly what he means.

4) CONTENT: There is some innuendo to sensual things when the succubus show up, other than that even the violence is not too graphic. I'd say this is PG by today's standards.

OVERALL: I'm glad I finally got my hands on this "classic". I don't feel like I could read or listen to it again, but I did enjoy this one time journey through it.

Rating:
Summary: dracula
Review: dracula, by bram stoker, is a great read even if it is slightly slow in places. i would recommend this book to people intrestested in anything wierd, but you do also need a will to get to the end at certain points.from the old movies i've watched the ending was slightly dissapointing, as i was expecting more action than i got. however a point i couldn't put the book down.if your a buffy fan this is a different level of vampire with extra tricks up his sleeves that really make this book. overall this book gets my approval.

Rating:
Summary: Yeah It's A Classic...
Review: Dracula is a classic. If you like horror books, even a little try this book. A very entertaining story that will, thrill, chill and amaze you to the very end! Dracula is a classic but I didn't like it that much ( thats why I gave it three stars, but a very good story. )

Try It Out.

Rating:
Summary: Going for the jugular
Review: When faced with the difficult decision of which undead monster to write about, a writer is best served by choosing vampires, whose awesome abilities and vestiges of human nature -- better conversationalists than zombies and mummies, more civilized than ghouls -- allow them to function as substantial literary characters.

Bram Stoker's "Dracula", however, is less about its title character than it is about the people who are trying to destroy him. Because the story is narrated by the hunters in a variety of first-person accounts, we get only their perspectives and not that of Dracula himself. It would have been nice to hear from someone who was once alive about what it's like to be cursed with an eternal undead existence, to be able to climb walls and turn into a bat at will, whether having to feast exclusively on human blood gets monotonous, and if all blood tastes the same. (I'd imagine some is saltier than others.)

The "living" characters in this novel are, in typical Victorian fashion, wound extremely tight. First we meet Jonathan Harker, an English solicitor whose firm has been hired by the infamous Transylvanian Count to help him buy a house in England. After finding himself imprisoned in Dracula's castle, noticing that the Count spends the daylight hours asleep in a coffin in an underground crypt, and being accosted by three female vampires under Dracula's command, Harker guesses that something about his apparently genial host is not quite right.

Eventually making his passage to England, Dracula proceeds to feast on a girl named Lucy Westenra, whose friend Mina happens to be Harker's fiancee. As Lucy lies in bed ailing and becoming paler by the day, a team of highly skilled experts, including the psychiatrist John Seward, the Dutch physician Abraham van Helsing (who speaks in enthusiastic bursts of pidgin English), Lucy's fiancee Lord Godalming, and a "laconic" Texan named Quincey Morris, is assembled to discuss the problem. Van Helsing's conclusion: We've got vampires.

The novel is more an exercise in suspense than in horror, especially since there is a time element involved -- Mina, also bitten by Dracula, will become a vampire under his power unless he is destroyed. The descriptions of the Count's desolate mountain castle, the morbid scenes of profuse bloodletting, and the concept of a nearly invincible villain are the very essence of horror, though, and Stoker puts them to as much use as he can. Many critics have commented on the novel's erotic symbolism, and if these views are valid, all I can say is that Stoker wouldn't be the first or the last author to associate sex with death.

Rating:
Summary: Classic novel, not so classic edition
Review: I don't have much to say about _Dracula_. It's a classic horror novel for a reason. It's highly suspenseful, and of course there are a number of odd literary themes under the surface. However, I wouldn't recommend this version for students, because while it has a decent introduction, there aren't any textual notes.

Rating:
Summary: I Vant To Drink Your Blood
Review: _Dracula_ is by no means an intolerable novel. I enjoyed quite a bit more than I thought I might, actually. However, it's certainly not a great book, or one that necessarily deserves to be called a "Modern Library Classic". The best part about this edition is the introduction by Peter Straub, by far the most interesting part of the book. Straub lays out a very convincing set of ideas about why the book is popular and what its meaning may really be. He is right when he states that film is what has kept this book in popular culture. It surely would be long forgotten without the countless cinematic efforts to bring vampire tales to a mass audience. The characters in the book are largely interchangable, with old Van Helsing coming in as the most irrating because of his hard to read accent. They also are rather shallow, and express thier emotions in a sort of child-like way. However, the opening chapters are exciting, and throughout the book well written patches appear at regular intervals. But let's be clear: this is a book that one should read for fun, and maybe to see what triggered the popularity of the vampire archetype, but not to find any deep meanings or real parallels with modern life. It's an idiosyncratic, Victorian horror novel with many good moments, but it is definately not a vital part of a discerning person's personal library.

Rating:
Summary: darkly gruesome, terrifyingly sexy
Review: This book was full of horror, love, action, and suspense. Though a few parts of it can be boring, for example, the part with renfield, the rest of the plot makes up for it. I read it in the eleventh grade, and it scared the heck out of me, all the while wondering what would happen next to Jonathan Harker, Van Helsing, and Lucy. All the characters were interestingly developed, but I wish that more appearances were made by Dracula, so we could see what he felt from his own point of view. Also, I thought the three vampiresses were erotically charged, but more should have been given as to who they exactly were in relation to The Prince of Darkness himself.
This book had erotica in it as well, like with jonathan harker's encounter with the 3 vampiresses in Dracula's castle, and how he felt sexually aroused when near them. It also showed how evil can be alluring and sexy, with the beauty and volutuousness of the vampires conjuring desire in jonathan harker.
This book had a great plot and suspense to go with it, as the theme of good vs evil continues. I also realized that Dracula, though an "evil" vampire, did at one time feel "human" emotions of love and longing with Mina, as he said "You'll be my companion and helper" to her. Stoker doesn't give all of it away, but there were allusions to a growing bond of blood, lust, sex, and love between the two. It showed dracula with a soft side to him, not as just a monster. Mina may also have discovered that, and found true love through an un-dead creature, but that love was never sustained, because they were from two different worlds that couldn't unite. I also feel Dracula was a very melancholy person in his castle, as he mentions "Through the years of mourning..." to Jonathan Harker, and that he came to London to find not just victims, but love, which he found in Mina. It's interesting that there are many sides to evil, and at times, you can actually sympathize with Dracula when he says stuff like this. He's evil, wantes to control others, but is also searching for a way to give and receive true love, but is torn in his own immortality. He's a very malicious, sad, and ambivalent character.
Mina was a strong, caring, devoted wife to Jonathan Harker, but it seemed to be obvious to me that she did have some love and sexual desires with dracula, so romance was no stranger to this book. It was sad that Dracula never found the proper way to be in harmony with love and mina, but he did find peace in the end, which made it wonderful. You can almost cry at that concept. Very moving.
I also loved that Stoker made this writing through journal entries, and newspaper entries, and in fact, this has encouraged me to keep my own personal diary to write my events in. This has also encouraged me to go to Transylvania myself, and see the historical Dracula's castle, that of Vlad tepes.
In all, a great read, and terrifyingly sexy. No wonder this book has become known as the world's greatest of gothic romances, and horror stories written. It still has the power and the grip to conjure up gruesome images of blood and gore and darkness in a person, and if you truly felt terrified after reading this, then Stoker has succeeded at this task. It's a book of good versus evil, as I said, and how predators like Dracula feed upon the timid, the innocent, the beautiful, as do many criminals in real life, so you know how he compares with murderers, rapists, thugs, etc. in the real world. Stoker did a great job, and to this day, no book has ever made such great fuss over than Dracula. It's a great horror story. A must read!

Rating:
Summary: Classic
Review: I got this book for 99p and wow is all i can say. From start to finish it keeps you gripped as to what could happen in the near future. Just felt i owed it to Stoker to review this book.

Rating:
Summary: Still scary today
Review: I can't think of a book that has launched such a varied genre and lifestyle. This is one of the most influential novels ever written. Even Stephen King wrote a vampire story. While at first it is a bit awkward to read since it's in the form of letters, journal entries and even a newspaper article the reader soon gets used to it and it quickily turns into a page turner. The chapter involving the ship is one of the scariest I have ever read. Great addition to anybody's library.