Customer Reviews

An Old Friend of the Family

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Dracula comes to modern-day Chicago to rescue the descendants of Mina Harker. The characters are three-dimensional and the story is gripping right up to the end. This is one of my all-time favorite books.

In Chicago, the wealthy Southerland family struggles to persuade Police Detective Franzen that something bad has happened to their beloved Kate Southerland. He agrees with them once her corpse is found. Unbeknownst to the family though they descend from Wilhelmina Hacker she is not just dead.

At the same time, someone abducts Kate's younger brother Johnny leaving a bloody finger behind as evidence of foul play. Since CPD failed them with Kate, the family matriarch Clarissa turns to a long time family friend Dr. Emile Corday for assistance. He investigates the murder and the turning of Kate as well as the kidnapping on the assumption they are linked beyond sibling coincidence. He soon concludes that the assailants are using the Harker descendents as pawns in a deadly blood feud over a century old and a continent away with the ultimate target being Dr. Emile Corday.

This is a reprint of Fred Saberhagen's fine first vampire tale with 1980's references like the Pointer Sisters. The story line is action-packed starting off as a mystery that turns into much more especially when Dracula arrives on the scene to protect the Harker brood from an evil sorceress only to realize that there is much more on the agenda. Fans of Mr. Saberhagen's vampire thrillers will appreciate AN OLD FRIEND OF THE FAMILY, which readers know lives up to its title.

Harriet Klausner

The difficulty of dealing with vampires in fiction is caused by the problem of balancing their near-supernatural powers with the limited ability of humans to deal with them. Saberhagen short-circuits this by changing sides! His favorite vampire uses his abilities to help humans, frequently at his own peril. This book illustrates this without pushing it to extremes, and he allows the poor humans to intervene decisively at critical points. A very good read or re-read!

An Old Friend of the Family was the first of Saberhagen's Dracula I read (many years ago) and it is still one of the best. While not as long or as meaty as some of his later books in the series, it is an excellent read with just the right combination of mystery and danger.

I only recently finished reading The Dracula Sequence book series by Fred Saberhagen and I think I have grown to adore his version of Dracula. My only regret in regard to these books is that I only recently started reading these books and sadly the author, Fred Saberhagen, passed away in 2007. I wish I had discovered these books while he was still alive. Also, it's very apparent to me that he did not mean for this book series to end where they did. The book series is clearly unfinished.
His first book in the series begins with the novel The Dracula Tape which is a very tongue in cheek re-telling of the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker but from Dracula's point of view. Some of his justifications for the events are somewhat... questionable, such as his claim that what happened on the Demeter was the result of the first mate going insane because he thought a vampire was on board. Okay, so the first mate went insane and caused everything but... the cause of his insanity was true... there was a vampire on board... Then there's his claim that his relationship with Lucy was casual and consensual. But in the next breath he admits she thought it was all a dream. So, yes. Our narrator is not exactly honest and sometimes you have to read between the lines to catch the truth. He leaves out the details he doesn't like, apparently lies, and slants things to the way he wants to remember them. But for all his flaws you start to like Saberhagen's Dracula. He's no Edward Cullen. He doesn't lament being a vampire. He's proud of what he is and has a very strong, personal sense of honor. It also has a very satisfying ending for those who love the idea of Mina and Dracula as a couple, without actually re-writing the ending of Stoker's novel.
The one thing I dislike is that Dracula's only real vulnerability in these books is wood. The reasoning given is that like a vampire wood is something that was once alive and transformed into something new.

The second book in the series is called The Dracula - Holmes file. This story starts with Dracula roaming Victorian London, shortly after the events of Dracula. He accidentally gets involved in a very disturbing case with Sherlock Holmes, who actually resembles Dracula, himself.

The Third book in the series called Old Friend of the Family, serves as a sort of glue linking the literary Dracula to the modern world through his connection to Mina's family. In this novel Mina's descendants are desperate for aide when young Johnny Southerland (the youngest of her line at this point) is kidnapped and his pinky fingers have been viciously torn off. The family, in desperation, use a spell left by "Grandma Mina" to summon help, at which point Dracula (under the alias Dr. Corday) turns up and becomes self-appointed guardian of Mina's family. And it becomes strangely satisfying when Dracula takes brutal revenge for what was done to poor Johnny. He even brutally mangles one of the kidnappers. You find yourself starting to root for him, despite his viciousness. He is a fantastic anti-hero.
This book also introduces us to Joseph Koegh, who marries into the Southerland family (descendants of Mina and Jonathan Harker). Joe becomes a private investigator and recurring character in the series and he serves as a good counter balance to our not-always-nice narrator.

The fourth book of the series is Thorn. In this book Dracula is attempting to win (at auction) a painting of his own "deceased" second wife from his mortal life only to find himself involved in a strange mystery that may involve his own half-vampire wife from his mortal life. The quality of the book series starts to slide a little bit here and the story alternates between the modern setting and the past. It actually has the feel of an episode of Forever Knight (The Canadian Vampire TV series from the early nineties). The best part of this book has to be Dracula's temper tantrum near the end of the book where Mina herself (now a vampire) shows up to warn one of the main protagonists not to go near him until it was over because of how dangerous he could be when angry. It was disturbing and amusing all at once. But considering what happened to lead to the tantrum it was completely understandable. Dracula and his lover were both blown up in a car. He survived by turning into mist and narrowly escaping. The woman was badly mangled to the point that she couldn't even ingest Dracula's blood to be transformed into a vampire and so she died in agony in his arms... which lead to a monstrous, probably warrented, vampire temper tantrum from Dracula.

The fifth book in the series is probably my least favorite. This one is called Dominion and deals with magick and Merlin himself (who has been wandering the streets under a curse that has left him an incompetent drunk...) Fred Saberhagen is not very good at describing magick. It's disjointed, hallucinogenic and a little incoherent. Fred Saberhagen can describe vampire powers fairly well but not generic magick or time travel very well. The best part though has to be when Dracula is tossed up into a whirlwind that tumbles him around through time, by an angry Merlin, who doesn't realize Dracula is actually on his side.

The sixth book in the series is a good one. This one is called A Matter of Taste. In this book it's revealed that the historical rogue Ceasar Borgia became a vampire and now wants revenge on Dracula (for something our narrator claims was accidental but that's debatable considering our narrator isn't very honest...) Dracula ends up poisoned and now it's up to Mina's human descendants to protect him while he is vulnerable. Meanwhile the now adult Johnny Southerland (the one Dracula saved in Old Friend of The Family) has to find a way to explain to his future wife that his "Uncle Matt" is not only a vampire but THE Dracula. The ending is surprisingly endearing and sweet.
In this book we learn that Dracula has a clever way of compensating for not having a reflection. He has replaced his bathroom mirror with a flat screened closed circuit television with a continual live feed of whatever is in front of it.

The seventh book of the series is one of the two I don't care much for. The other is Dominion. In this one, called A Question of Time, a lot of time travel happens and as I discussed before, Fred Saberhagen is not very good at writing magick or time travel. This particular book has no real impact on the majority of the series and I don't feel it was necessary in the grand scheme of things.
The eighth book of the series is called Seance for a vampire. And yet again our "Hero" makes some questionable decisions, such as wanting to seduce a young Medium whose brother has just been killed, But he was "considerate enough" to wait a night or so after the brother's death to seduce her. This was a fairly interesting one but the one thing about the book I don't care for is Fred Saberhagen sometimes puts his own opinion into the character. For example he has Dracula feel that all Mediums are frauds. He does not believe in ghosts. He believes in magick, time travel, spells, wizards, vampires, werewolves, and even karma but ghosts is the thing Dracula doesn't believe in? I don't buy it. It just doesn't make sense to me. This book deals with the historical Rasputin and is another cross over with Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.
The ninth book of the series is A Sharpness on the Neck and here Fred Saberhagen seems to poke fun of himself a bit, poking fun of how "Mr. Graves" (Another alias for Dracula) shifts from third person perspective to first person perspective. And it also pokes fun at how boring and long winded he can be when explaining things to people. In this story we learn that Radu (Dracula's vampire brother) wants a man named Phillip Radcliffe dead as revenge against his ancestor. It's up to Dracula and a masked band of helpers (Mna's human descendants) to save them.
The story alternates with the past, particularly The French revolution, and the present day. There are subtle nods to A Tale of Two Cities and The Scarlet Pimpernel. At one point Dracula disguises himself as an executioner (and actually carries out several executions) to save a man he is honor-bound to protect.
The funniest part of this book is when Dracula makes a three to five hour long video tape of himself sitting at a desk explaining the back story and the people who are being made to watch the video find it boring and even try fast forwarding it. At one point he even enthralls them to watch it and they still fall asleep about five minutes into it.
Little things are there to remind you of the viciousness of our protagonist. Even though he goes out of his way to try to rescue a little girl at one point, he still mangles a group of vampires who side with his brother Radu, thralls animals to remain still so a little boy can kill them with his mini guillotine, and carries out executions he doesn't even really agree with. He also mentions beating his brother with a wooden cane and tells us that his brother only cried out in pain to "annoy" him. He is... still... Dracula.

The Tenth book in the series is called A coldness in the blood and deals with a self-proclaimed Egyptian deity and a quest to find the Philosopher's Stone. A serious and not-quite resolved strain is put on "Uncle Mathew" (Dracula) and his relationship with Mina's human family (who he's been more or less stalking ever since the book Old Friend of the Family, set twenty years earlier...) The strain comes when Andy (Joe's son) goes to Uncle Matt's apartment to put together a website for him. While there he gets unintentionally wrapped up into the chaotic adventure which subsequently leads to Andy's mother forbidding him from ever helping Uncle Matt with his computer and or going to his apartment again. I can't help but feel sorry for Dracula here because he's clearly grown attached to these people that he has made himself protector of and it's apparent they're all still quite afraid of him. Well, I suppose I'd be a little nervous too if Dracula decided to become my guardian Angel but I've grown to like the guy.
Dracula has been trying very hard to get others to adopt the term Hmo-dirus or Homo-sapien-dirus as a subspecies title for Vampire or as he says Nosferatu. ...It doesn't seem to catch on.
The one thing I dislike about this novel is yet again, like with ghosts in Seance for a vampire, Fred Saberhagen puts his own views in Dracula and it doesn't make much sense that a man from fifteenth century Romania would have issues with a young man having an earring and yet he does. And the author goes out of his way to have multiple characters unrealistically hate the earring, including even a very young character named Dolly. Since when does Dracula have a 1950s middle America mind-set about Jewelry? It doesn't fit.

In any event it's obvious here that this was not meant to be the last book of the series. And it's disappointing to know the book series never truly will be completed since the author passed away.

There are two short stories set in the world of The Dracula Sequence but I haven't had the chance to read those yet.

For anyone who misses vampires who could be terrifying and charming, charismatic yet violent, and not sparkly, I strongly, strongly recommend these books. I think this book series is highly under-rated and Fred Saberhagen's version of Dracula has become one of my favorite literary characters.

I didn't particularly like The Dracula Tapes, but I thought that might have been because it seemed forced; Saberhagen was obliged to stick with the "facts" as written by Bram Stoker, which produced some very silly and unintentionally comical results.

I was sufficiently entertained so as to be drawn to a second novel, hoping that the author might do better when not fettered by the chains of existing narrative. I selected "An Old Friend of the Family" because it is an early book and might still retain something fresh.

I was dead wrong. Writing in 81, Saberhagen makes attempts to modernize his tale of Dracula coming to rescue Mina Harker's descendants but those efforts now seem dated and comical. The entire setup, about Morgan Le Fay and her minions, seems forced. And kidnaping Dracula by whacking him on the head with a wooden stake just seems ridiculous.

This book is the one that pretty much convinced me not to bother with the rest of the series.

This was one of my favorite vampire stories that I've read!! Definately recommend to vampire readers.