Book Review: DRACULA UNBOUND By Brian Aldiss *** out of *****

Following on his hugely successful and tremendously entertaining novel Frankenstein Unbound, which combined time-travel with a post-modernist revision of Mary Shelley's life and her most famous novel, Brian Aldiss dips into the same well with Dracula Unbound, his attempt to do something similar with Bram Stoker's Gothic masterpiece.

Alas, the second time is not the charm. Where Frankenstein Unbound was fast-paced, coherent, and thought-provoking, Dracula Unbound is slow, meandering, and intellectually lukewarm.

The plot (from the publisher's blurb): In the barren dust of the far future, the sun leaks energy in a darkening sky and the only remaining humans are imprisoned by spectral, bloodthirsty beings. Back in the brilliant Utah sunlight of 1999, two ancient graves yield evidence that a species of human coexisted with the dinosaurs . . . Linking these scenarios is impetuous inventor Joe Bodenland (the protagonist of Frankenstein Unbound), who has just created a machine that manipulates time to dispose of hazardous waste . . .

Where's Dracula, you ask? Well, without revealing too much, let's just say that Bodenland manages to go back in time, meet Bram Stoker, and together they hunt down the vampiric creature that will later inspire Stoker to revise his masterpiece.

As is obvious from the synopsis, the plot is confusing and confused, and Aldiss, never a writer to dwell on characters' motivations and psychology, is at his worst here, with characters that are mere sketches, and dialogue that is woefully artificial.

And unlike in Frankenstein Unbound, where he treated the source material and its author with reverence, here, Aldiss foregoes the tone and mood of the original novel, and seems intent on ridiculing Stoker, portraying him as a staunchly conservative, syphilitic hypocrite, who is always eager to do battle for "God and Country" at the drop of a pin. Aldiss, who has a penchant for psycho-sexualizing his stories at the expense of quality, misses the mark here, and his portrayal of Stoker is nothing less than offensive, especially since in his afterword he mentions relying for his research on two highly-contested biographies: A Biography of Dracula: The Life Story of Bram Stoker by Harry Ludlum, and The Man Who Wrote Dracula: A Biography of Bram Stoker by Daniel Farson *.

But all could have been forgiven if the story had been compelling. But it isn't, and fans of Stoker and his novel will be disappointed by what Aldiss does with and to them.

Still, the novel is high on imagination, even if it is low on craft, and it is an interesting misfire by a singular author.

* For a more balanced analysis of the novel Dracula, and the life of Bram Stoker, check out Elizabeth Miller's brilliant essay, Coitus Interruptus: Sex, Bram Stoker, and Dracula, available here.

Text © Ahmed Khalifa. 2022.

Ahmed Khalifa is a filmmaker and novelist. He is the writer/director of several short films and a feature, which was released on Netflix, and the author of a number of novels and short stories, including the YA horror novel, Beware The Stranger, available on Amazon. He is also the host of The Dark Fantastic Podcast. Find him on Twitter @AFKhalifa and on Facebook @DFantasticPodcast

Book Review: DRACULA: ASYLUM by Paul Witcover **** out of *****

Designed as a sequel to Universal's infamous 1931 film adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, starring the immortal Bela Lugosi, Dracula: Asylum is a rare book, in that it is a sequel that took me by surprise. As a huge fan of the 1931 film directed by Tod Browning, I sought out the book primarily due to it being an official sequel to that film, expecting a fun, quick read, with a thick-accented Dracula roaming the streets of London, drinking blood and spouting one-liners. What I got was something else entirely.

Author Paul Witcover uses the 1931 film and Stoker's novel as a starting point and then proceeds to transcend both, with a novel so well-written, so ambitious in its complexity and ideas, that it becomes a masterpiece of dark fantasy that manages to achieve the impossible: Add a new twist to the Dracula mythos.

The book takes place in London during WWI, following Dr. Lisa Watson, a psychiatrist who is transferred to the Seward Sanitarium for shell-shocked British soldiers, hoping to help her fiancée get back his memory, which he's lost due to the traumatic experiences he suffered in battle. Now he thinks himself Sherlock Holmes and doesn't remember anything about his true identity. Meanwhile, in the catacombs of the asylum, Renfield, who is still alive, but has become a mentally damaged mute, discovers that the corpse of Count Dracula, his master, is still there, with a stake through its heart, waiting to be revived. So he pulls out the stake, reviving the dark Count, and all hell breaks loose, as Dracula, whose slumber for the past twenty years has strengthened his psychic powers, plans to destroy the world.

Although the above synopsis doesn't do the story justice, the less told about the twists, turns and revelations of the plot, the better. Suffice it to say that if you think you know where the story is going, think again, as Witcover has a multitude of ideas and surprises under his sleeve, and, with his rich, stylized Gothic prose, lays them out one by one, continuously delving into darker psychological territory. Witcover's Dracula is the most cunning, malevolent version of the Count since Bram Stoker's; an evil, shrewd master of darkness and manipulation who is much more dangerous than previously thought. This Dracula's evil is almost biblical in scope. While the main characters, Lisa and Denis, are three-dimensional and flawed, and Witcover allows us to go under their skin to see the light and darkness within them.

Despite the novel's overly dark tone and Witcover's lifting of a couple of ideas from the films They Might Be Giants and Dracula 2000, the writing is so rich, the attention to detail so admirable, the story so original and well-plotted, that this novel deserves to be called a near-masterpiece of dark fantasy that transcends genres. And, if there's any justice in the world, it should become a classic.

Text © Ahmed Khalifa. 2011 - 2022.

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Ahmed Khalifa is a filmmaker and novelist. He is the writer/director of several short films and a feature, which was released on Netflix, and the author of a number of novels and short stories, including the YA horror novel, Beware The Stranger, available on Amazon. Find him on Twitter @AFKhalifa and on Facebook @Dark.Fantastic.AK·Writer

THE DARK FANTASTIC'S BEST DISCOVERIES - 2021 EDITION

Books:

© Berkley

1- THE VOICE OF THE NIGHT By Dean Koontz. : First published in 1980 under the pseudonym Brian Coffey, and later released under his own name in 1991, The Voice of The Night is one of Dean Koontz’s best, yet least known, novels. It is one of his most understated books, and his only coming-of-age tale. Read or listen to the full review here.

Book Review: DRACULA'S DEMETER by Doug Lamoreux *** and a 1\2 out of *****

Bram Stoker’s seminal horror novel, Dracula, has inspired numerous sequels, prequels, re-imaginings, and stories focused on side characters from the book. What makes Dracula’s Demeter by Doug Lamoreux in some ways special, is its focus on the vampire count’s journey from his homeland to England onboard the Russian schooner, the Demeter. Stoker only dedicated a small portion of his novel to the events that take place on the Demeter, but Lamoreux uses every ounce of detail that Stoker provides and runs with it, creating an entertaining, compelling, if a bit stilted, novel, that is filled to the brim with nautical minutiae.

Lamoreux fleshes out the five characters only briefly mentioned in Stoker’s original book, and creates an original character of his own with a clever twist. And although it is a bit hard to tell who’s who in the first third of the book, by the second half, as events speed up and the violence escalates, the characters come into their own, especially the Scottish cook, and the English stowaway. Lamoreux’s version of Dracula himself is also notable, as this Count is no romantic figure. Lamoreux takes Dracula back to his original form, depicting him as a powerful, vicious, disgusting, brutally violent monster with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

What stops the novel from becoming a horror classic is Lamoreux’s almost sole focus on storytelling. This is the kind of book that is almost all story, without enough emphasis on character. While the cast is likable enough, aside from the previously mentioned cook and stowaway, none of the characters really shine. Also, the book’s tone is slightly inconsistent, with the first two thirds playing out like a violent Gothic horror story, with graphic violence and a somewhat playful tone; while the last third of the story takes a darker, grimmer aspect. And Lamoreux’s choice of eschewing the epistolary format of the original novel, disconnects it stylistically from its source material, to a large degree.

But faults aside, Dracula’s Demeter is a fun, richly textured, Gothic horror novel, and is a must for fans of Stoker’s classic tale.

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Text © Ahmed Khalifa. 2021.

Ahmed Khalifa is a filmmaker and novelist. He is the writer/director of several short films and a feature, which was released on Netflix, and the author of a number of novels and short stories, including the YA horror novel, Beware The Stranger, available on Amazon. Find him on Twitter @AFKhalifa and on Facebook @Dark.Fantastic.AK·Writer

Book review: A Sherlock Holmes Double-Bill: THE TANGLED SKEIN vs. THE ITALIAN SECRETARY

© Wordsworth

Arthur Conan Doyle's creation of sleuth extraordinaire Sherlock Holmes revolutionized detective fiction and continues to do so to this day. I doubt there is a single writer of crime or detective fiction who hasn't read some or all of the work of Doyle and has been influenced by it, by the clinical attention to detail, the strong sense of atmosphere, the sharp dialogue, and above all, the sense of fun.

Although Doyle had retired Holmes a long while before the author's own death, writers continue to churn out pastiches; some are good, some are bad and some are brilliant. The Tangled Skein and The Italian Secretary fall somewhere between good and brilliant.

The Tangled Skein by David Stuart Davies focuses on Sherlock Holmes facing the lord of the undead himself, Dracula. And although the premise sounds ludicrous and could even be considered an insult to Doyle's work, the resulting book is neither. Author and Holmes expert David Stuart Davies captures Doyle's tone and style almost perfectly and weaves a tale full of action and mood. It is a well-told tale that stays true to the mythos and features dialogue that could have been written by the master himself. Where the book falters a bit is in the mystery aspect. In trying to combine the mythologies of both Doyle and Bram Stoker's work, Davies veers more towards the plotting style of Stoker, with more action than intrigue. Although that makes it a rousing thriller , full of atmosphere and foreboding, it also makes it a not very good mystery. But there is an added bonus here. Davies ingeniously adds the very neat twist of making this story a direct sequel to The Hound of the Baskervilles. Something that avid Holmes readers will find delightful. I did.

Classic Review: THE JEWEL OF SEVEN STARS by Bram Stoker (1903 edition) *** out of *****

Written by Bram Stoker, and considered one of the most influential supernatural thrillers of all time... No, it's not Dracula. It's The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903), a dated and mostly stilted novel, but one which created the template for almost all subsequent stories that dealt with Egyptology and mummies.

The plot, about a band of men and one young woman in Victorian England who embark on an experiment to resurrect Queen Tera, a powerful Egyptian queen with otherworldly powers, is incoherent and at times painfully slow. But Stoker is a master of atmosphere, and his writings always have a fascinating obsession with the supernatural and the tensions between technology and superstition, religion and paganism, or as he describes it in the novel, "Powers, old and new". Despite its stagy nature, its two-dimensional characters, and its stiff dialogue, the story is compelling and has a doom-laden, eerie atmosphere, which culminates in an unforgettable and harrowing finale that was so upsetting to readers and critics upon its initial publication in 1903, that Stoker revised the novel for the 1912 edition, replacing the original finale with a nonsensical and impotent "happy ending".

The novel is now mostly remembered for its meticulous attention to detail in the sections dealing with Egyptology, its original central premise, and its harrowing ending. But it's not an easy read, as it features some of Stoker's most cluttered prose, and many chapters are repetitive and overlong. But for patient readers who like Victorian Gothic fiction and are interested in its development, it is worth the effort.

P.S. Most available editions are of the 1912 version, which should be avoided at all costs.

Text © Ahmed Khalifa. 2020.

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Ahmed Khalifa is a filmmaker and novelist. He is the writer/director of the feature film Wingrave, released on Netflix, and the author of a number of novels and short stories, including the YA horror novel, Beware The Stranger, available on Amazon. Find him on Twitter @AFKhalifa and on Facebook @Dark.Fantastic.AK·Writer

Book Review: CURTAINS OF BLOOD by Robert J. Randisi **** out of *****

A beguiling, immensely readable thriller, Robert J. Randisi's Curtains of Blood, is a must for fans of Dracula and Bram Stoker.

Using the now clichéd high concept of Bram Stoker crossing paths with Jack The Ripper in 1888 London, Randisi produces what is arguably the best of all the books that tread the same ground (including The Dracula Dossier by James Reese, and Stoker's Wilde by Hopstaken and Prusi). What sets Randisi's story apart is his style. He has a mastery of atmosphere, and his minimalist, unfussy writing style and short chapters pull the reader in, slowly but surely, into a compelling and disturbing story. Randisi is one of those writers with the rare talent for achieving much with few words, making his books practically read themselves.

While Curtains of Blood isn't brimming with historical detail like others of its ilk, it is well-realized and has enough historical flavor to make it believable. It also offers some clever theories about what could have been the inspiration behind Dracula, Stoker's masterpiece, and it ends on a chilling note that makes one look at that timeless horror classic in a new light.

A top notch historical thriller, Curtains of Blood is highly recommended for horror, thriller, and historical mystery fans.

Text © Ahmed Khalifa. 2020.

Video Version:

 

Ahmed Khalifa is a filmmaker and novelist. He is the writer/director of the feature film Wingrave, released on Netflix, and the author of a number of novels and short stories, including the YA horror novel, Beware The Stranger, available on Amazon. Find him on Twitter @AFKhalifa and on Facebook @Dark.Fantastic.AK·Writer

Book Review: STOKER'S WILDE by Steven Hopstaken and Melissa Prusi *** and a 1\2 out of *****

One of the most fun horror/dark fantasy novels in years, Stoker's Wilde is one wild ride, and a pleasure for fans of Gothic Horror and Victorian fiction.

The story takes Bram Stoker, freshly appointed as manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London, joins him with the foppish, contrarian, and pre-infamy Oscar Wilde, and pits them against an evil, supernatural enemy that is out for world domination. There are monsters, gore, plenty of action, and more than a modicum of humor, with appearances by a number of historical figures from the era, and nods to numerous horror classics, including the works of Stoker, Wilde, and even the Joss Whedon TV show Angel (1999-2004)!

The only caveat is that the novel's epistolary style, which channels the style of Stoker's Dracula, a purely Victorian, blood and thunder type of novel, doesn't always gel with the authors' agnostic/progressive tone.

But with a title like Stoker's Wilde, one knows the authors don't take themselves too seriously, and, ultimately, this is a novel written by horror fans for horror fans, who are bound to have a great time, thanks to straightforward prose, loads of imagination, and genuine affinity for the characters. Recommended.

Text © Ahmed Khalifa. 2020.

Ahmed Khalifa is a filmmaker and novelist. He is the writer/director of the feature film Wingrave, released on Netflix, and the author of a number of novels and short stories, including the YA horror novel, Beware The Stranger, available on Amazon. Find him on Twitter @AFKhalifa and on Facebook @Dark.Fantastic.AK

THE OVERVIEW: Special DRACULA Edition

Dracula: The Un-Dead by Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt: When it was announced that an "official" sequel to Dracula by Bram Stoker, one of my all-time favorite books, was coming out, I was ecstatic, especially since it was reported that the book would be penned by a descendant of Stoker's and would be based on Bram Stoker's notes. I bought a copy of the book, cracked it open, and all was revealed.

Dracula: The Un-Dead is an entertaining, fast-paced, occasionally thrilling book, but it is anything but an "official" sequel to the greatest Victorian Gothic novel ever written. In fact, it reads more like one of the dozens of attempts to capitalize on and modernize Stoker's original, harrowing tale. The fact that it was co-written by a member of the Stoker family is irrelevant; what matters is the story itself, and the story contained within this novel's pages does not show an ounce of reverence toward the source material. Dacre Stoker and his co-author Ian Holt take Stoker's original story and basically cut it to shreds, reshape it, and create a book that reads like an attempt at a Hollywood blockbuster, complete with explosive set-pieces, gory effects, and graphic love scenes.

That's not to say it is a bad book. Far from it. This is one compelling piece of dark-fantasy, written in straight-forward prose, and with nary a dull moment. But when the plot centers on Countess Bathory wreaking havoc in London, killing members of the band of heroes (Harker, Mina, Holmwood, and Van Helsing), while Dracula turns out to be alive and well, and, shock, horror!, a hero who wants to protect Mina and her son, Quincey, you can hardly call it a continuation of Stoker's masterpiece. Did I also mention that Bram Stoker himself makes an appearance?! Throw in Jack The Ripper, an obsessed detective, and lots and lots of chases, and you get a modernized, oversexed, somewhat cheesy attempt to create a blockbuster sequel.

The Bottom Line: An entertaining, fast-paced novel that should be read as yet another attempt to modernize Stoker's tale. But a proper, true to the source material, sequel it is not.