Dracula - Bram Stoker : Review


Title: Dracula

Author: Bram Stoker

Series or Standalone: Standalone

Genre: Classic, Horror

Format: Paperback


Publication Date: May 26th 1897


Goodreads Summary: 

When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula with the purchase of a London house, he makes horrifying discoveries about his client and his castle. Soon afterwards, a number of disturbing incidents unfold in England: an unmanned ship is wrecked at Whitby; strange puncture marks appear on a young woman’s neck; and the inmate of a lunatic asylum raves about the imminent arrival of his ‘Master’. In the ensuing battle of wits between the sinister Count Dracula and a determined group of adversaries, Bram Stoker created a masterpiece of the horror genre, probing deeply into questions of human identity and sanity, and illuminating dark corners of Victorian sexuality and desire. 

My Review:

Soo, Dracula is the first book we read in the book club I recently joined at school. Although this novel was probably one of the slowest reads I have ever read, I enjoyed it to a certain extent. Mainly because I'm all about vampires. Well I should probably say the modernised type of vampires, e.g. Damon Salvatore. 




I'm not be used to the traditional characteristics of a classic vampire so I found reading this difficult and far from my comfort bubble, but also a bit boring. In vampire books/movies/tv shows I live for the funny vamp humour, but we don't have that in Dracula. The novel lacked entertainment in my opinion because of the lack of comedy which I personally find more amusing then a large amount of drama or/and action. It also lacked the attributes not only in the vampires of the novel, but in the characters that make me enjoy a good novel.  

Due to reading/watching countless modern adaptations of vampirism I love vampires very much and I did not particularly enjoy Dracula being made out as the bad guy the entire book. Not once did I see any hope for a vampire to have humanity or to "live a normal life". All humans in the novels were determined that being a vampire is "damned upon". I completely disagree with this. I think it would be pretty damn awesome to live forever. IMAGINE HOW MANY BOOKS YOU COULD READ!!

However, in saying all of this I enjoyed reading a classic vampire novel. I found how Dracula can become a mortal man in daylight really quite interesting and something I haven't heard of in vampirism, but I think I defiantly rather Damon Salvatore to Dracula any day. I also really loved the context of the novel and the setting. I not only love reading books set in London, I found it quite interesting reading about Transylvania, somewhere not many books are set in especially the ones I read. 

Overall, this experience of reading Bram Stoker's Dracula was a bit out of my comfort zone and really pushed me to read something I would never pick up. It was a significantly slow book with no real character development and due to that, lacked entertainment for me. My expectations for this book were pretty neutral before beginning it and are still rather neutral after completing the book. I do think that if you are a vampire lover that you should at least attempt to read one of the first examples of vampires in literature. 


Plot:  📖   📖   📖   . 5

Characters: 📖   📖   📖 

Writing: 📖   📖   📖   

Feels/Romance: 📖   . 5


Overall Enjoyment: 📖   📖   📖   

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer - Book Review

Class of 59' - John A. Heldt : Book Review

Friday Reads: 24/02/2017