Reviews tagging 'Suicide'

Dracula by Bram Stoker

9 reviews

carina_dreamer's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.0

• Primeiro livro desde que andava na escola que eu sublinhei e ainda coloquei post-its com a timeline (desliza o carrossel).
Pois, isto foi assim de confuso para mim em termos cronológicos. Eu queria perceber a história e os planos do Drácula, por isso, precisava de me organizar e ficava difícil com todos os saltos temporais e geográficos.

• O que é de criativo e inovador neste livro em comparação com outros clássicos que li foi também o que me incomodou e me impediu um pouco de me conectar com ele.
Toda a história é contada por meio de: diários, cartas e telegramas. Todas as personagens humanas têm direito a expressar-se um pouco.
Se juntarmos saltos cronológicos + cartas como meio de narração + vários narradores = muitas características grandiosas para eu gostar do mix.
Só ficou melhor quando todos se juntaram no mesmo espaço.

• Em termos de facilidade de leitura, pareceu-me ser um clássico com um passing rápido com ação constante e o vocabulário acessível.

• "Drácula" não é a história original de vampiros, aliás, conseguimos ver as semelhanças e diferenças entre este e "Carmilla". Eu queria muito ler ambos por causa do lore vampírico e comparar com o que conheço de séries modernas.
No meu Buddy Read com a bestie estava sempre a dar comparações entre o livro e as séries. Diverti-me com isso!
Ótimo manual para criar vampiros e exterminadores. O que não gostei? Os vampiros eram uns fracotes - queria luta!

• É um livro do séc. XIX e escrito por um homem branco, claro que tem aqueles elementos de: mulheres desejosas de casar; elas têm de ser protegidas e salvas; temos uma mulher inteligente, mas comparam-na a um homem, etc.

Rating: 🌟🌟🌟

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and Death of parent

Moderate: Grief, Confinement, and Child death

Minor: Blood and Suicide

fjordpingvin's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense medium-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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Forced institutionalization, Confinement, Death, and Medical content

Moderate: Classism, Injury/Injury detail, Sexism, Mental illness, Animal death, Blood, Animal cruelty, and Xenophobia

Minor: Antisemitism, Gore, Suicide, Grief, Murder, and Terminal illness

thomasdj's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual violence, Murder, Violence, and Cannibalism

Moderate: Xenophobia, Torture, Blood, Sexism, Sexual assault, Physical abuse, Gore, Death, and Misogyny

Minor: Suicide

linnylionheart's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Body horror, Confinement, Death, Death of parent, Animal death, Blood, and Medical content

Moderate: Mental illness

Minor: Vomit, Antisemitism, Child death, Fire/Fire injury, Alcoholism, Infidelity, Slavery, Suicide, Terminal illness, and Violence

mhhmm's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Animal cruelty, Body horror, Animal death, Child death, Child abuse, Murder, and Blood

Minor: Child death, Panic attacks/disorders, Medical trauma, Child abuse, Cursing, Death of parent, Suicide, Kidnapping, Injury/Injury detail, and Forced institutionalization

rory_john14's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad 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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Death, Death of parent, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexism, Stalking, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Misogyny, Forced institutionalization, Grief, Blood, Body horror, Child death, and Murder

Moderate: Drug use, Animal death, Cannibalism, Classism, Kidnapping, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Suicide, Gun violence, and Torture

Minor: Racism, Alcohol, Dementia, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, and War

queer_bookwyrm's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious tense 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

2.5

 2.5 ⭐ CW: suicide, blood drinking (obviously)

Dracula by Bram Stoker was a buddy read with a friend. This was...not an enjoyable read. I understand it is a classic and written in a time where long winded descriptions were expected, but damn it made hard to get through.

Dracula is told in a series of letters and personal journal entries with news articles and telegrams interspersed between. We follow Jonathan Harker, a solicitor who has come to Castle Dracula to help Dracula in purchasing a property in London. Jonathon experiences some weird stuff that ends up making him ill.

We also follow Mina, fiancee of Jonathon, worrying over her friend Lucy, who has begun sleep walking and becoming pale and sickly for seemingly no reason. After Lucy's death, all of her suitors come together with Mina and Jonathan to figure out what is going on and to stop the Count.

Mina deserves way more credit than she gets in this book. Mina is clever and is solely responsible for rallying the men to her cause and is the one to put together all the information in order to come to the conclusion of vampires. Dracula's death (spoiler alert lol) was very anticlimactic. Stoker does a lot of telling instead of showing.

We see themes on superstition and how important it is to consider the grain of truth within as well as the ever present theme of humans being afraid of their souls becoming damned.

I skimmed most of this book, since most of the information could have been cut back. Glad to have read it, even more glad to be done with it. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Suicide

Minor: Blood

annawndr's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark funny mysterious medium-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

5.0

This book has everything! A count with a funny accent who lives in an spooky old castle, a girl and her three suitors who coincidentally all have the same bloodtype (and one of them is a cowboy), a madman who regulary breaks out of the asylum, a woman who‘s not only smarter than every other character in this book, but also has the sweetest marriage ever and a dutch professor who‘s a part time vampire hunter. And as a bonus you get atmospheric descriptions of the scenery and various natural events.
It’s funny, only a little creepy and definitely worth a read!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood

Moderate: Child death and Mental illness

Minor: Animal death and Suicide

brnineworms's review against another edition

adventurous dark hopeful mysterious sad 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

4.0

If Dracula had ended after chapter four, I might have given it a full five stars. The first fifty-odd pages are undoubtedly the best part of the book. Jonathan Harker is trapped in Dracula’s castle, and slowly realising that he is trapped. The atmosphere is tense and eerie. Both Harker and Dracula are interesting and well-developed characters, and the interactions between them are great.

I want to talk for a moment about Count Dracula specifically. In the first four chapters he is depicted as (seemingly) kind, hospitable, careful, and emotionally intelligent, but there’s something sinister about him too. There’s also quite a bit of queer subtext. Dracula is a complicated and sympathetic character at this point, but later his characterisation changes drastically and he ends up being reduced to a cartoonish villain with very little depth. He also becomes a much less prominent part of the narrative – he’s not entirely absent, but he takes on more of a peripheral role. I wish we’d seen more of him. (Interestingly, this is the exact reverse of my view regarding Frankenstein’s monster)

Of course, I must address the elephant in the room – the bigotry. Dracula is a character crafted from several antisemitic tropes. His hooked nose is emphasised many times, and there are parallels between his vampirism (specifically his preying on children) and blood libel. Something else that stands out when viewing the character through this lens is the way he is presented as both an immensely powerful mastermind and a weakling with a “child-brain” – proto-fascist rhetoric, perhaps? The book as a whole is riddled with xenophobia, racism, ableism, and sexism. In many ways it’s a product of its time. Its age doesn’t excuse these problematic elements, but it does offer some context at least.

I was led to believe that Dracula is slow-paced but for a gothic horror story it’s actually very quick. It’s relatively well-written, and the epistolary format is executed well. Excellent build-up to an anticlimactic ending. There’s so much more I could say about the characters and the story (both praise and criticism) but I think I’ll wrap things up here.

Overall I did enjoy Dracula and I’m glad I finally sat down and read it. It’s certainly not without its flaws but I think it’s worth reading if you haven’t already.

“The last I saw of Count Dracula was his kissing his hand to me, with a red light of triumph in his eyes, and with a smile that Judas in hell might be proud of.” 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Antisemitism, Blood, Confinement, Death, Forced institutionalization, Gore, Medical content, Mental illness, Misogyny, Murder, Racism, Sexism, and Violence

Moderate: Ableism, Alcohol, Animal death, Child death, Death of parent, Drug use, Grief, Kidnapping, Racial slurs, Stalking, Suicidal thoughts, and Xenophobia

Minor: Body horror, Self harm, Slavery, Suicide, and Vomit