Jamie Revell
One suspects that most people familiar with genre fiction will have a pretty good idea which famous figure has a name that literally translates as “Son of the Dragon”, so it's no great surprise when the TARDIS arrives in 15th century Romania.
However, this is a straight historical, and it's the figure from history we see, not the supernatural version later popularised by Bram Stoker. This makes the story understandably gruesome in places, but it manages to work in a decently exciting story based around the real historical events of 1462. (As a non-expert, the only historical inaccuracy I spotted was that Radu the Handsome is here shown to be a Christian, whereas, in reality, he had apparently converted to Islam long before).
If there is a flaw here, it's that the author is a little too willing to excuse Vlad's behaviour as a product of the times. Such apologetics, however, did not seem to me to be as central a point as they were in “Medicinal Purposes”, and so were easier to ignore.
Which leaves a pretty good story, with some dramatic scenes and interesting characterisation of Erimem. The latter, of course, does not come from our enlightened times, and, moreover, since Vlad is from her future, doesn't automatically associate his name with the things that we would today. This obviously doesn't work out very well for her, but is quite plausible, given her background.
All in all, I enjoyed this, and I think it works well.
One suspects that most people familiar with genre fiction will have a pretty good idea which famous figure has a name that literally translates as “Son of the Dragon”, so it's no great surprise when the TARDIS arrives in 15th century Romania.
However, this is a straight historical, and it's the figure from history we see, not the supernatural version later popularised by Bram Stoker. This makes the story understandably gruesome in places, but it manages to work in a decently exciting story based around the real historical events of 1462. (As a non-expert, the only historical inaccuracy I spotted was that Radu the Handsome is here shown to be a Christian, whereas, in reality, he had apparently converted to Islam long before).
If there is a flaw here, it's that the author is a little too willing to excuse Vlad's behaviour as a product of the times. Such apologetics, however, did not seem to me to be as central a point as they were in “Medicinal Purposes”, and so were easier to ignore.
Which leaves a pretty good story, with some dramatic scenes and interesting characterisation of Erimem. The latter, of course, does not come from our enlightened times, and, moreover, since Vlad is from her future, doesn't automatically associate his name with the things that we would today. This obviously doesn't work out very well for her, but is quite plausible, given her background.
All in all, I enjoyed this, and I think it works well.