Move over, Dracula! There is a new vampire classic in town, and it is creepy, compelling, and utterly memorable!
Dracul starts off in Bram Stoker's childhood years. He was a sick boy confined mostly to his room, until one night on the cusp of death, he somehow makes a miraculous recovery at the hands of his beloved nanny Ellen. Thereafter, his illness completely disappears. After this unexplainable event and a series of strange deaths in town, Bram and his sister Matilda starts digging around to find out what is really going on with their nanny. But Ellen vanishes without a trace, and the years go by. Until one day, Matilda sees Ellen on the streets of Paris, and the siblings are immediately pulled back into this mystery.
Dracul is the prequel to the classic vampire novel Dracula. I found it completely fascinating that it's presented as a true story, one detailing Bram Stoker's early dealings with the evil that eventually led him to write Dracula. Dracul is written by his great-grandnephew Dacre Stoker, who claims he put the story together after meticulous research from Bram's personal notes and Stoker family journals.
This book hits all the right notes. It's creepy and atmospheric, taking place in old villages and castle ruins, in gloomy daylight and dark nights. It's exhilarating and thrilling, full of unexplained events and horrifying happenings. It gives off the impression that this world of vampires and evil beings could really exist, and there's something so deliciously fun about that.
The only minor complaint I have is that the narrative switches between Bram in the present and his story leading up to that moment, until they finally converge into the climax. Usually authors employ this technique when what's happening now is more exciting than what's happening in the past, and so this switcheroo keeps the readers engaged with the backstory until it catches up to the current narrative. But in this case, the backstory is just as exciting, so the narrative would've lost nothing by sticking to telling it in chronological order. But that's only a few pages here and there, so it's a small quibble.
I picked up this book on a whim. I was browsing the latest paperbacks and happened across it. I'm usually a little leery of prequels, especially when it's written by someone other than the original author. And having never read Dracula, I wasn't sure what to expect. But I didn't need to worry. This book is a chilling and completely riveting vampire tale, and it wouldn't surprise me if one day it reached classic status in its own right. Now after all this, I'm curious how Dracula stacks up.
Readaroo Rating: 5 stars!
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