Customer Reviews

Covenant With the Vampire (Bookcassette(r) Edition)

5 star:		(39)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The first of the three book series, Covenant With the Vampire, is one of the best Vampire Sagas ever written. From the very start, a dark mood is set and it continues to unfold throughout the rest of the book. The story unfolds as Arkady Tsepesh's father has died and he and his pregnant wife are on route to Transylvania to undertake his late fathers role, that as an aid to a great uncle, Vlad Dracula. Arkady and his wife do their best to remain optimistic, but as the days go by, Vlad's evil begins to encompass every part of their lives.

The book is set as a prelude to Bram Stoker's Dracula and Jeanne Kalogridis does a magnificent job is setting the evil atmosphere you'd expect. The novel is filled with horror, suspense, tragedy, and despair, while always showing a ray of light and of hope that this evil can be overcome. This book is not to be passed up, whether you are a fan of Vampires or horror in general.

I'm not normally a fan of horror. Not that I don't like the genre, but I just never really found an author or horror novel that really made me want to find more books in the same genre.

Then I read The Historian and found that horror can be about more than just shock moments and blood. That book melded historical fiction (one of my favorite types of fiction) with vampire lore and myths about Dracula and yeilded a book that's one of my favorite reads to date.

Amazon recommended the Family Dracul books after I rated the Historian highly and reviewed it. And I'm glad I came across this book!

Similar to the Historian in a way (which is primarily told through a bunch of letters that is found by the story's main character over the course of time), Covenant With The Vampire is told as a series of diary entries written by decendants of Vlad Dracula.

Most everybody that's even remotely familiar with the Dracula legend knows some of his true history as well as the folklore: How he sold his soul in order to live beyond the grave, using the blood of the living to grant himself immortality and power. This book expands on an already rich and interesting subject. It delves deeper into that pact and how it would affect generations of Draculs for centuries. As it happens chronologically, this book takes place BEFORE Bram Stoker's Dracula

The book is quite addicting. Reading the characters' experiences and horrors in the first person via a series of diary entries really sucks you in as a reader and makes the horrors, loss and experiences all the more powerful. I really couldn't put this book down after I started it. Definetly what I'd call a pleasant surprise and highly recommended.

The Diaries of the Family Dracul. This series is a priceless collection that should grace every Vampire's collection. Ms. Kalogridis seems to attain the sublime gift of literary omniscience. All the journals are masterfully written, full with prismic expression sublime. These books are a gateway to the Gothic World of the strigoi, wherer we become intimately acquainted with the Tsepesh {sic} Family, & all those around them.

The text is highly addictive, for it is the most crystallized Vampire novel I have ever read. It is a masterpiece. There is passion, violence, blood, sensitivity, romance, tragedy, sensuality, cruelty, fear, & debauchery. All emotions are stimulated. The scenery, the sounds, the textures, the tastes, the emotions, are all dramatically tangable. Wolves, superstitious peasants, Vampires, storms, are all present here, all guided by the nefarious hand of Vlad Dracul, who are all powerless in His infernal game of pleasure & pain.

The whole tale is an inspirational opus, depicting the World of Darkness to its most splenderous. This is the stuff beautiful nightmares are made from.

Reading Covenant With The Vampire by candlelight is most appropriate, sipping on a glass of slivovitz to arm the bones on a cold rainy night, for it is always as such within...

In the dark of the night, may the hypnotizing emerald eyes of Vlad watch over you. But whatever you do, do not break the covenant...

It isn't even that much of the elements have been done before by better writers. Or that the few original ideas don't logically track. It's that the author runs a subtle but nonetheless disturbing homophobia through all three novels.(Every time there's any hint whatsoever of some ambiguous character, this person is always repugnant) And yet she seems to have no problems whatsoever with rampant incest. Disturbing.

Arkady Tsepesh has returned to his childhood home to Transylvania with his pregnant wife Mary to take the place of his deceased father as the caretaker to his eccentric uncle, Prince Vlad. Arkady decides to begin writing a journal to record the painful days ahead and to also remember his father. The only other family member left is his older sister, Zsuzsanna, who was born crippled. Unfortunately the Tespesh family is plagued by madness, tragedy and children born deformed or dying young.

Once back at the family home, Mary notices strange things about Arkady's uncle. He doesn't eat or drink. He also pays too much attention to Zsuzsanna than Mary is comfortable with. Mary is warned by her servant, Masika, to get away before it is too late. She witnesses many things that have her scared to death and she can't seem to get through to Arkady what a monster his uncle is.

Things are about to become worse because Prince Vlad has broken the covenant and the peasants know if he is already preying on his family that they will be next. Arkady feels the madness descending upon him. He starts seeing his older brother, Stefan, who was mauled by their family dog when Arkady was five. He thinks that Stefan is trying to tell him something but he can't seem to figure it out.

The entire story is told through diary entries of Arkady, Mary and Zsuzsanna. A very dark, intense read. It isn't for the faint of heart because there is graphic scenes involving incest and necrophilia that had me cringing.

With Covenant With The Vampire by Jeanne Kalogridis I will start with the positives of the book and work my way down to the negatives. It starts off a historical fiction piece written as a diary by Vlad The Impalers family. I found that to be a "Novel" ideal. The author lies a good solid foundation with the beginning entries giving us a brief history of who and why they are there about each of the family members other than Vlad in the Dracul family. From there at takes a down hill spiral.


There simply was not enough action in this book to keep my interest. There was very little killing, no fighting, and only two vampires created in the entire book in which that didn't occur until the final chapters. There is also VERY little about or of Vlad Dracula in this book. Which made it even more dissapointing. The main character Arkady is portrayed way too wholesomely and sniveling. Who wants to read about a sniveling belly aching hero? Not I. I have bought the next two installments of this series. Hopefully they will prove to be a bit more entertaining.

I was surprised when I started to read this novel that the author choose a more traditional and mythological take on vampires. Like vampires are not harmed by sunlight, but are harmed by garlic, and can be shape shifters. I like the eerie and dreadful atmosphere of the novel. This is not an Anne Rice book where the vampire is confused about his identity or mesmerized by a painting. This is a novel about a family who slowly discover the truth about there kind and giving Uncle Vlad. At first I thought "Oh gee another Dracula novel . . .." It is a prequel to Stoker's work that takes place fifty years before the original novel. This novel tells of a pact between Dracula and his descendants. That as long as they obey him, i.e. bring him visitors to eat, he'll keep them from harm and provide them with all their needs. Only the eldest son knows what their "Uncle" is. But when the latest heir to the Covenant arrives from England with his expecting wife, the vampire's pact may end. This novel also gives hints on Dracula's plans on moving to England.

I give it four stars because the middle of the book kind of drags. It is almost a reconstruction of the who Mina and Lucy relationship and the drama they endured during Lucy's illness. If you read the original you'll remember the whole illness that Lucy suffered at the hands of Dracula. We go through it again here with Mary and Zsuzsanna. Zsuzsanna is ill and bedridden. They hang garlic wreaths around the windows, as per peasant servants requests, and she gets better. But when the garlic is removed she gets sick again. So yeah that was boring because it was almost line per line from DRACULA. So the middle of the novel revolves mostly around Zsuzsanna's malady, Mary and her husband Arkady's doubts on there sanity.

All that said I still enjoy the build up and the gloomy atmosphere. It kind of reminded me of Dark Shadows.

"Covenant With the Vampire" is the first in the trilogy of "The Diaries of the Family Dracul". The second book is "Children of the Vampire" and the third and final book is "Lord of the Vampires" The reason I mentioned the other novels is because they should be read after reading this one to get the whole and entire story. All are highly engrossing and interesting. How Ms Kalogridis thought up all this is beyond me - but she is obviously talented. Although all the books are wonderful reads - be prepared - there are strange situations in the books - among them are incest and homosexuality. The books don't go into to much "intimate" details on these subjects - and they're not something that carries on into the complete story. So the squeamish should tolerate them just fine. Therefore, I would advise anyone who likes vampire novels to purchase all three of them.

I love vampire novels, so when I found this on the shelf I just had to pick it up. From the second I started reading, though, I had one big issue.

I've already read Dracula. I felt like I was reading it again. I realize that this story is supposed to be a sort of "prequel" to Stoker's novel, but it felt so similar that I knew what was going to happen before I turned the page. Written in diary format, starts with an arrival late at night and a warning by the peasants, etc etc. I found too many similarities between Mina and Mary, and it even seemed like they ate the same dish in both novels. It was almost enough to make me put it down... almost.

The author seems to be brilliant; it'd be a lovely story if it didn't feel a little like a rip off. Once the storyline started diverging and some of her own elements were incorporated, I enjoyed it a lot more. I just couldn't help but feel like, were Bram Stoker alive today, he'd scream something about plagiarism.

The action picked up at the very end of the book, and I will be finishing the series, if only to finish the storyline. I'd love to read something by Ms. Kalogridis that sounded more like herself and a little less like Stoker, and I hope that one of the other books in this series will provide that.

A wonderful trilogy that answers so many questions from Stoker's novel. Questions such as who were the 3 females that tormented Harker in Transylvania? and Who is Abraham Van Helsing and why is he so obsessed with the destruction of Dracula? and Why hadn't the peasants destroyed him in all these years? It was a glorious prequel that kept the same style and tone as Stoker's and that deeply enriched the Dracula legend.