Reviews with content warning for Mental illness - Dracula

average person eats 3 flies a year" factoid actualy just statistical error. average person eats 0 flies per year. Flies Renfield, who lives in an asylum & eats over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted

Okay now that that's out of my system, I have to confess, I read this book is a rather unorthodox fashion, as part of the Dracula Daily emails, whereby the letters in the book are emailed out to readers on the corresponding dates. It's a fun idea for an epistolary novel and I found that it suited the format well. However, did I manage to keep up with those emails? Heck no! In fact, I only managed to finish it now, a month after the book has ended, because I started copying the emails into a text-to-speech bot and listening to months at a time.

The above being said, I really enjoyed my first experience with Dracula! I especially loved the characters of Mina and Van Helsing, and Jonathan "wifeguy" Harker gets a mention too. Although the book some times suffered for it's period typical Christianity and sexism, it was refreshing how Stoker broke free of that at times and allowed Mina to be more than just the wife in jeopardy. Like every man in this book, I too would give my life for Mina Harker at the drop of a hat.

In term of the ending, it did feel somewhat anti-climatic. I understand that an outright fight between Dracula and the party would have ended in Dracula's survival, but I was expecting more than just a quick brawl with a group of unnamed (and unimportant) men and them stabbing the Count as he slept.

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orchidlilly's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

Dracula's horror has a kind of slow burn that makes it very hard to capture in movie form. This also makes it, for those of us who are used to more thriller-like horror, or for those who are already aware of vampires as a concept, a bit of a slow read. There are times when the book drags on, most notably the newspaper sections and legal proceedings. It is rife with that classic British brand of racism, which while expected, is no more pleasant than it would be now. It also has a good bit of that 19th century sexism which is annoying, if only because of how repetitive it becomes, and how much of a hindrance to the plot it is.
All in all, an interesting read, but a good bit of the charm and suspense is lost to the changing principals of time.

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