Anno Dracula [Paperback]

Kim Newman (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 380 pages
• Publisher: J'ai lu (January 4, 1999)
• ISBN-10: 2290049662
• ISBN-13: 978-2290049662
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,884,139 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

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3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars What if Dracula Won?, July 30, 2006

By 

Tyler R. Tichelaar "Superior Book Promotions ... (Marquette, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Anno Dracula (Paperback)

The power of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula will probably never be matched as far as vampire stories go, but Kim Newman makes a valiant attempt to write an equally interesting tale. Certainly, the premise of Anno Dracula, and its two sequels, is both postmodern and daringly original. What if, Newman asks, Dracula had taken over England, rather than being destroyed by Van Helsing and his companions? The novel depicts a surreal London where Dracula has conquered England, not solely by terror but political alliance--he has made himself Prince Consort by marrying Queen Victoria and making her a vampiress. This premise for a novel could end up to be ridiculous, but Newman pulls it off by distancing the narrative from Dracula's character.

While Stoker's Dracula and Anne Rice's vampire novels are written in first person, Kim Newman avoids giving readers deep emotional connections based on fear of Dracula, which providers a feeling of security for the reader, although it is also a fault of the novel. Dr. Seward has managed to escape Dracula's revenge, while Van Helsing and Jonathan Harker have been destroyed by Dracula, and Mina Harker is a minion at Buckingham Palace and Lord Godalming has himself become a vampire. Dr. Seward's diary entries are the only first person narratives in the novel, and they are sparsely interspersed among the chapters (Stoker's Dracula was completely written in first person in the diaries and letters of the characters). Seward's narratives bring the reader closest to the tone and feel of Dracula. The rest of the novel in third person makes it difficult to connect to the characters who are so abundant and so undeveloped it is impossible to keep track of any of them except the vampiress Genevieve.

Fans of Dracula, especially those wanting scary thrills like the film versions provide, will be disappointed, that Dracula does not appear until the very end of the novel--oddly something Elizabeth Kostova in The Historian also chose to do, and which makes both novels somewhat anti-climactic and a let down. By comparison, Stoker allowed Dracula to take main-stage through many scenes in his novel.

Because of Dracula's basic absence from the book, I doubt any reader will experience nightmares. Yet the novel does have an effective atmosphere of doom, where vampires and "warm" people walk about London together, like two political parties, the "warm" holding out against converting to vampirism (one wonders what would happen if all the warm became vampires--who would the vampires then feast on?). The characters meet vampires in the streets and at drawing-room parties, and while there is some political unrest over the vampires' presence in the land, it is merely a social problem, and not a major threat to the nation.

The student of late Victorian times will enjoy meeting old literary favorites and historical people ranging from Florence Stoker to Oscar Wilde, Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Jekyll and Dr. Moreau, Lord John Roxton, and Beatrix Potter. The plot centers around trying to track down Jack the Ripper, who is out murdering vampiresses, to the alarm of the vampire establishment. Newman effectively creates the atmosphere of this mixed warm and vampire, fictional and historical world. And while the reader has to wait until the last chapter to see Dracula, the climax at Buckingham Palace is powerful and worth waiting for, and intriguing enough to make one want to read Newman's next vampire novel, The Bloody Red Baron, set during the First World War.

- Tyler R. Tichelaar, author of Iron Pioneers, The Marquette Trilogy: Book One