Reviews with content warning for Death - Dracula

Reviews tagging 'Death'

Dracula by Bram Stoker

195 reviews

aquila_raven's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional inspiring mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

It was a heavy read for me. I mostly read one chapter per day (≈20–30 pages/day).

It is a collection of journal entries, mostly, describing the first of Jonathan Harker's encounter with the Count, the latter's “invasion” in UK, Lucy's sickness and death and the hunt for his head by Dr Van Helsing and his new friends that the Count had hurt so much.

It's written, mainly, from Jonathan Harker, Dr Steward and Mina Harker's point of view. Count Dracula isn't as present as the title makes you think, but what is present is the pain and grief he's inflicting to the main characters, as well as the traits, characteristics and weaknesses of vampirism.

Much to my surprise, the hunt was only in the much later chapters and the fight lasted only a few pages.

My favourite character was Quincey Morris… I should see the ending coming, it's always the same with the characters I like…

Masterpiece for its time.

Be warned, he Vampire race described in this book has nothing to do with pop culture vampires. It's more on the superstitious and traditional side than the today's aesthetic one.

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eyebrightt_'s review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad slow-paced

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

4.25

very proud of myself for finishing this!!! very quintessentially victorian in its treatment of death and religion. the first act with jonathan is genuinely some fantastic horror (there's a lot of weird things that happen and go totally unexplained, and it's really creepy imo. bersicker's whole ordeal, for example), and i didn't mind the second part with lucy's illness either. the third act slows down a *lot* and is probably the weakest part of the novel.

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vinsoo03's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

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thecozyrogue's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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heatherb's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Diverse cast of characters? No

3.0

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chalkletters's review against another edition

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adventurous dark slow-paced

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

3.0

After last year’s successful Dad-goes-walking & I-go-singing holiday, this year we’re trying a Dad-goes-walking & I-go-reading weekend. I’m booked to discuss three books: Dracula, Shadowplay and The Deathless Girls as well as walk around Whitby, where much of Dracula is set. At this point, I have really no idea what the holiday itself will be like, but I’d read Draculabefore, so I decided to refresh my memory. I was hoping to read the ‘Dracula Daily’ edition, but it doesn’t come out until November.

Dracula is very much a novel of its time: the attitudes towards women and religion and people from countries other than Britain are entirely 19th-century, as are the long speeches. Some of Bram Stoker’s long passages of description work really well as scene setting for a horror novel, but others are a little tedious if you’re reading purely for enjoyment and with 21st-century eyes.

That said, it’s not completely possible to read Dracula purely as a horror novel; there are too many things that don’t really make any sense. Why are all Dracula’s victims women, when he does away with plenty of men and has Jonathan Harker at his mercy? What, exactly, does Dracula want in coming to London? Not to mention, there are some pretty huge coincidences which stretch credulity if you’re not looking at Dracula as a metaphor for something.

The essays in the Norton Critical Edition did a good job exploring the many, many different fin-de-siècle fears that Dracula could be read to represent. These are somewhat long and dry if you’re not actually studying Dracula, but still worthwhile in the long-run. (That said, the ones relating to the various cinematic and theatrical adaptations of Dracula aren’t particularly necessary as background information on the novel.)

Bram Stoker’s characters fall into two camps: vampires (and Renfield) vs non-vampires. As there’s plenty of conflict between the two groups, it doesn’t really feel as though conflict between the non-vampires is missing, but it is a little unlikely that fully fleshed-out people would agree quite so completely about everything. Nonetheless, the characters are distinct with very little chance of muddling them up with one another, which is definitely an achievement.

Overall, it was fun to read a horror novel which really felt like a horror novel, and the Norton Critical Edition has hopefully prepared me for interesting discussions on my holiday!

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_justagremlin_'s review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced

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

4.5

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Maybe I’m just biased because I love spooky stuff, but Dracula has been my favorite read this year.

If you’re looking for a classic book, and you’re just getting into classics, I recommend this one. It’s pretty easy to understand (besides the handful of times he writes characters with accents, those can be a little hard to get through lol). But besides that I found it easy to follow, and very captivating.

Dracula is told from the POV of diary entries and newspaper clippings and stuff like that, which is really cool. One note about this book though, it is so so so so so s l o w. Personally I didn’t mind this, because I like my gothic horror on the slower side to build up anticipation. And it wasn’t badly paced or anything, it was just slowly paced. However, if you’re someone who likes to have a fast read, this might not be the book for you. It starts off at 100 with a character in Dracula’s castle, but then immediately goes back down to 0 and it takes a while for it to build up again. I didn’t have a problem with this though, and I loved the book

The relationships between all the characters is also so good. They all love each other so much and honestly it’s really funny because I wasn’t expecting Dracula to be as “The power of friendship” that it is.

Overall, Dracula is a fun but slow spooky read. 5/5

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