One of my recent literary achievements was finally reading Bram Stoker's Dracula (the original, not the novelisation of the movie (seriously, they made a new book out of the movie that was based on a book)). As far as stories go, it was pretty dry. The suspense wasn't that great, although to someone who hadn't been exposed 12 combined years of Buffy and Angel, a passing interest in Vampire: The Masquerade in it's various incarnations, and other pop culture vampire bits and pieces (for example, someone who read it when it was first published) the mystery of the book would be much greater. The great mystery in the 2nd part of the story is pretty obvious to the modern reader.
It's the oldest book I've seen that was written as if it was made up of the several characters different views of events (I'm sure some more literary type will tell me that there are older examples of this).
The one bad bit in the matter is the actions of Dr Van Helsing. From the start he was pretty confident he knew what type of creature he was dealing with, but he did not do everything he needed to do to protect Lucy. He took some half measures, and delayed her demise, but he only got serious about the matter after an innocent life had been lost, and more were likely to follow.
Similarly, later on they miss the obvious similarity of the symptoms that Mina Harker is suffering from with those that afflicted Lucy. In such a situation where they are taking great pains to piece together all the bits of knowledge they have, this stuck out like a sore thumb.
Overall, Bram Stokers' Dracula is not the best of stories, but is pretty important for all that it has inspired.
End Post
Writing time: 19 minutes
Time since last post: half an hour or so
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