Dracul

This started out as a solid four-star read for me, which dwindled as I reached part III and read through to the end. The seams really started to show, small errors recurred enough to become real annoyances, and I just got bored and impatient. If only this had been edited with more attention to detail and more dedication to trim the fat! What could have been a fun and spooky romp at 300 pages became too much of a shoddy slog at 500.

But before dwelling on deficiencies, I'll talk about what's good:
- The idea is charming - what if Bram Stoker was inspired by events in his life to write Dracula? This is a lot of fun to explore.
- The characters of Ellen and Matilda are strongly drawn and each sympathetic and compelling in her own way.
- There's some good spooky stuff, well-coupled with mystery. Going in we all know Ellen must be some kind of supernatural whatsit that could inspire a vampire story. But her origin and motivations really captured my curiosity, and watching the kids investigate and find creepy clues gave a nice atmosphere of dread.
- I liked the hints at Stoker's real development as a writer - his dissatisfaction with civil service and insistence on writing theater reviews, his roommate creepily collecting flies, his reflection on bedtime stories about mythical Irish monsters. It makes me want to read a non-fiction account!

And now, what detracted from all that:
- It's pretty clear that this was originally written as a more conventional narrative, then refitted into the “found documents” format. And probably THEN reorganized to have “Now” sections punctuating the journal entries & letters.
- The authors frequently struggle with verb tense, attempting (and failing) to make the “Now” sections present-tense. This results in cringe-inducing passages like “the roaches parted . . . as men scream all around them.”
- As reviewer Roman Clodia mentions, the found documents format adds nothing - rather than creating unique points of view, underlining different levels of knowledge, or creating any mystery or tension, it simply passes the narration ball. At least once, a character refers to himself in third person in his journal, because the authors forgot who was supposed to be writing. It's not only an embarrassing error, but it highlights how little the characters' voices are individualized.
- The world building is at first intriguing, but ultimately confused and lackluster. What are the rules of vampires in this world? I'm not sure. You become a vampire by renouncing Yahweh and being recruited to Satanic Hogwarts? Or just the renouncing is enough? Or being drained by a vampire? Or do you need to drink their blood too? Wait, there are characters who do that but aren't actual vampires. It's kind of a mess. Similarly, Dracul is as powerful as a god at times, and pretty much an average human at others. Unless he drinks, like, a LOT of blood first? Maybe? And vampires have to sleep during the day. But Ellen never did when she lived with the Stokers, and Dracul doesn't need to except when he does.
- The authors' ending note attempts to convince us that Stoker really believed all this and Mina Harker was a real person and all kinds of nonsense that's just insulting to our intelligence and actually just undermined all that went before.

So close to being a fun, good read! I'm hoping it's optioned as a film and the necessary trimming improves these issues. It seems like a prime target for a good screenwriter and director.