Customer Reviews

Revenge of Dracula

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As noted in my review of "Dracula Unborn", I have also read this book as part of the condensed trilogy "Dracula Lives".

Once more, the story is cleverly made to seem like historical fact through Peter Tremayne's INTRODUCTION, in which he makes clear that the forthcoming story is actually a publication of an original manuscript he has come across; in this case, written in 1866 by Upton Welsford, an inmate from a "certain mental health clinic near Guildford in Surrey."

Upton was apparently once a "senior official at the Foreign Office" in London who was committed to an asylum following an adventure through Romania three years previous.
This adventure, which makes up the bulk of the story, revolves around a dragon statuette and the woman he loves taking the forbidden object to a certain Castle in Transylvania...

Once again, we have the cardboard cut-out characters, rich (but over the top) historical detail and scenes similar to those in Bram Stoker's famous vampire novel.
I have also more clearly noticed, this time around, the direct references to the book, "Dracula", particularly the description given of Dracula himself (almost in verbatim), and some paraphrasing to this extent.
In something slightly out of context to this, another reference to a genre work is an "ancient rhyme" voiced by Upton's friend, Avram. Curiously it is not taken from "Dracula", but from Universal's 1941 movie, "The Wolf Man"!

This book explores Dracula's vampiric past (as conceived by Peter Tremayne) even further than "Dracula Unborn" and the last chapter ends with a neat tie-in to the original novel Tremayne's "Dracula books" are based upon.

An entertaining read, but not a patch on Stoker's masterpiece.