Customer Reviews

The Lair of the White Worm

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Although a bit strange I found this book to be entertaining. It follows Adam as he battles the mysterious Lady Arabella, falls in love with Mimi, And encounters an assortment of odd characters. Not as good as Dracula, but if you can handle the far-fetched plot I would recommend it. Also, It is free.

Had heard this book is terrible and it is. There are the germs of at least three excellent horror books in there...unfortunately Bram couldn't decide which to focus on and jumped wildly from one idea to the other. Is it about the mysterious curse haunting the last scion of a noble family, a la Hound of the Baskervilles? Or perhaps the evil power of mesmerism? A titanic battle of wills between a strong minded woman and an evil interloper for the soul of her sister? Or is it a straight out find-and-kill-the-monster romp? You decide!

The unfocused storyline, wild leaps of (il)logic, gaping plot holes and purple prose made this the funniest book I've read for some time. If you liked Shaun of the Dead, you'll probably find this hilarious. The ending is pure gold - I can't decide whether Michael Bay or Monty Python would do a better movie adaptation of it.

Definitely worth what I paid for it.

Vague memories of a movie had me try this one. One of my least favorites as I read through my free kindle books. I kept hoping he was joking. I heard how acceptable racism was but this was my first encounter. Couldn't quite get past it.

Story definitely not worth digging through the rants against the "savage", Silly book altogether.

This book is missing the beautiful prose of Dracula. Also the blatant racism leaves a sour aftertaste. This is one of Stoker's later works. I am not sure what happened to cause such a departure from the descriptive style of his earlier work.

I read the free Kindle edition of this book. I was shocked at how terrible it was -- the story seemed disjointed and ludicrous (even for a story about a giant white worm that can assume human form). Then I discovered that this version is an abridged and rewritten 1925 edition that eliminated over 100 pages from the book. I will now seek out the unabridged version to see if it is any better.

The Ken Russell movie version is terrible and wonderful at the same time. I think it may be the most bizarre movie I have ever seen.

Because he kept the title and ditched the plot of this book when he made the movie back in the 1980s. The movie was good, silly, kinky fun. The book is bad, silly, confused nonsense. Strictly speaking, this book doesn't so much have a plot as it has a series of incidents which are not plainly connected to each other in terms of motivation. Stoker present a series of incidents but gives us little reason to understand why things should be the way they are--there's no internal logic to this story. Characters mill around, doing things for reasons which are unclear. One character, Oolonga (dreadful period racism alert!), appears to be present purely for the purpose of being annoying, then dying suddenly in order to demonstrate There Is More Going On In The Quiet English Countryside Than There Should Be. We never do find out why Edgar Caswall was so obsessed with Lilla Watford, or what he hoped to attain through his psychic assault upon her over the teacups. Mimi Watford, who has shown her ability to stand up to the villains of the work, needs to be married off in order to protect her--while her cousin Lilla is left at home, frail and vulnerable and Doomed! I could go on--and on! and on!!! but instead of demonstrating why each and every word used in assembling (I can't say "written''--the whole thing reads more like a patchwork quilt than a coherent piece of fiction)this book was thrown away, I'll just say although I paid nothing for the Kindle version of this book, I still feel a little cheated. I'd feel a lot cheated if it hadn't been for this line, from an interchange between Our Hero and his Wise Mentor: "Remember, she has the strength and invulnerability of a diplodocus." Sadly, I don't think Stoker realized what he had done there, or had any notion of how to go about raising the rest of the book to that level. Also, this book contains repeated instances of cruelty to mongooses.

The Lair of the White Worm by Bram Stoker. Published by MobileReference (mobi).

The Lair of the White Worm is a surreal horror fantasy novel by one of the greatest horror writers of all time. It is a must-read and a must-own book for anyone interested in the genre.

Prior to The White Worm my only experience with Bram Stoker was Dracula.

The White Worm is disjointed and unfocused and never quite makes its (or any) point. It seems to always be skirting the edges of what could have been a good story but never quite gets there.

Final say? As in my title, sure glad it was free!

Well, not all that horrible, mostly. Stoker's most famous work, Dracula, centers on a character half of this world and half of another. Here, the White Worm shares that dual nature, but the connection between two natures remains elusive. Then there's the unbreachable split between two dark forces, something that mere mortals can only approach with legal documents and high explosives.

Although the dark mood and sense of vast, unseen forces comes through clearly, more reamins to the imagination than in fact becomes explicit. This might suit readers with the most vivid imaginations, but might not wholly satisfy readers who like more substantial handholds on a story. Like me, for example.

-- wiredweird