Anno Dracula by Kim Newman – August 25, 2022

 

So, in todays Unasked for book review, I’m critiquing Anno Dracula by Kim Newman. Honestly, I felt this book was pretty goofy. 

Its synopsis is, what if Dracula, from the novel Bram Stokers Dracula, won against Van Helsing, Mina Harkness, and crew, and then married and turned Queen Victoria (into a vampire)? It’s a pretty interesting premise, and the book had some interesting parts. However, it reads as a pastiche mashup of Dracula and Victorian era characters and historical figures. 

If you’re not a fan, or just informed, of the literature and historical figures of that time, you’ll miss a lot of historical and character references.

Now, I do know quite a bit about Victorian Era characters, and a bit about that era’s historical figures, but I admit to not finding their inclusion in the novel all that interesting.

Like I said, the premise is interesting, and kind of reminds me of a Victorian era True Blood, but I found many of the main characters just plain uninteresting. I also initially thought that the book was a translation, only later to find out it was not. I thought it was translated because it starts out very awkwardly in terms of phrasing and sentence structure. I’m not sure if the author tried writing in the style of the time, or some of the vampire characters original eras, but it was weird at first.

Anyway, not my favorite book, though certainly not the worst I’ve read. I won’t ever read it again, or it’s sequels. I wish I had checked it out from the library and not bought it.

This concludes today’s unasked for book review.

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