Dracula

 

Everyone knows this already, but to announce it again; Bram Stoker's Dracula, a gothic horror novel changed the mythology of vampires forever, or at least modernized it. Before that, vampires existed in fiction or myths already, but they were never uplifted as much until 1897.

Like Frankenstein's novel, the narration is told in epistolary format, meaning that there were plenty of letters and logs corresponding around different characters throughout the unfolding taking place primarily in London, England and Transylvania, Romania. Also, seeing the words "gay spirits" several times kind of made me confused.

The story is of course about vampire Count Dracula's ambition to find new suitable blood and spread the undead curse even further, such as by turning more victims into loyal servants, as witnessed by the three sisters occupying his castle already at the intro chapters.

Standing in his way is the eventual coalition of partners whose own partners have become victimized by him, such as Jonathan Harker becoming a prisoner, or Lucy Westenra becoming a vampire who stalks young children.

Leading this coalition is vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing, Dracula's arch nemesis and likewise, and for the first time I just discovered by reading the novel that he actually has a Dutch nationality, quite intriguing!

Renfield is one of the characters I had never heard of before, basically, he is an insane man who wishes to consume insects, spiders, birds, and rats to absorb their "life force", and therefore assimilate to Dracula himself.

While I liked reading the novel finally, I can't help but feel that it was too long of a read and that the pacing was too dragged out. While I definitely liked the first and final parts, the middle part of the chapters felt too big.

But that's just my opinion, it's still worth reading if you would like to know where it all started before the endless amounts of Dracula and vampire media in general got out for over a century now. And it might never change again, until somethings tops over the Dracula mythos.

(And that certainly won't be the Twilight novels/movies for instance, yuck)

Rating: **(out of 4)