Dracula

“Despair has its own calms.”

3.5/5⭐

For a book written in the 19th century, it started off with surprisingly fast pacing. We meet the famed Count Dracula right away and quickly learn of his sinister nature.

Reading from the journal entries of a visitor-turned-prisoner to Dracula’s castle, we see the slow progression from confusion to fear to panic. It is spooky and strange and exciting and everything I wanted in a book about Dracula.

But after this promising opening, the story grinds to a slow crawl for the rest of the book. We barely interact with Dracula again. He is ever present, scheming and causing problems, but it is always on the fringes, never the focus.

The focus, instead, is a group of cartoonishly valiant men that dedicate themselves to ridding the world of the vampire’s evil and saving a few damsels in distress.

The only problem is, they are all incredibly stupid.

In the same vein as characters in horror movies that explore creepy houses alone and in the middle of the night, the characters in this book keep secrets from each other for no reason and ignore blatant signs of trouble.

One of the main characters, after seeing her beloved friend turned into a vampire after visions and difficulty sleeping, begins having nearly identical visions and sleep problems, but decides it is probably her nerves and declines to tell anyone about it.

I appreciate this book as a classic, and actually enjoyed it more than Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but it won’t blow modern readers away.

(I saw a review saying Dracula is the soap opera version of Wuthering Heights, and I think they have a point).

Underline worthy quotes:

“Truly there is no such thing as finality.”

“Doctor, you don't know what it is to doubt everything, even yourself. No, you don't; you couldn't with eyebrows like yours.”