Dracula: The Un-Dead, published in 2009, is the self-proclaimed sequel to Bram Stoker's original Victorian horror story. Bram Stoker's great-grand-nephew Dacre Stoker and "Dracula documentarian" Ian Holt teamed up to co-author the definitive continuation of Bram's classic tale.
Readers seeking to gorge themselves on the Victorian twin taboos of carnal relations and blood-soaked death will not be disappointed. Four of the original characters from Bram's novel reappear, twenty-five years after the Transylvanian Count is defeated--or so we thought--in the Carpathian mountains. The English heroes of the first novel are still alive and kicking; but between alcoholism, depression, and drug addictions, they have been reduced to pale shadows of their former selves. They find themselves--with Quincey Harker, the Hamlet-like non-hero--sucked into more battles with the vampiric realm. This time they fight not only the Count but also a greater demon: the sadistic and sexually weird Countess Bathory.
The deep darkness of the first Dracula, told through the intriguing lens of correspondence written between characters was enough to draw this reader well into this new book. One comes expecting the same horrific battle between terrified good and mysterious evil; the greatest fear in Bram's telling grows from one's not knowing how vast and formless is the shadow of the vampire. The Un-Dead, however, surrenders the sharpest weapon of the horror story by revealing too much. The narration attempts to inform the reader about too much of the inner lives of the characters, rather than allowing the mind of the reader--which is often darker than any author's pen--to infer from the action. In writer's club parlance, The Un-Dead "tells when it should just show." The revelations are so numerous, varied, and at times long, that the reader gets distracted from the movement of the plot, which would otherwise keep readers turning the pages late into the night.
(Full disclosure: this reviewer admits that these faults often arise in the work of freshmen novelists, of which he is one.)
Perhaps the overindulgence of words stems from the intent of the authors, as described in an extended authors' note at the end of the book. The young Stoker and Holt composed this piece in order to "reclaim Dracula" from its use by so many other authors and screenwriters in the last hundred years. At the same time, Stoker and Holt sought not to alienate the Dracula fans who have come to the realm through the other (admittedly bastardized) versions of the Count's story. As a result, the thick blood of Vlad the Impaler gets diluted in The Un-Dead until the dreaded nemesis of Bram's novel seems a hobbling hodge-podge of motivations, desires, and choices. The authors' goal of exhaustive historical accuracy does not rescue the book, as descriptions of people and places often come across as professorial name-dropping that should have been left on the cutting room floor.
The real bite of a horror story like Dracula, un-dead or otherwise, is the power of a simple narrative simply told. The insight of the great Aristotle is as instructive here as it was thousands of years ago: a story has a beginning, middle, and end. In a horror story, those parts ought to be just long enough to inflict the wound of fear. Then the story vanishes in the night, leaving the reader with an insatiable desire for more. In its attempt to reclaim the name of Dracula for the Stoker family, The Un-Dead may well have put the nail in the coffin of other would-be heirs. And Dracula-geeks will likely find saliva dripping from the fangs at all the insider information buried in the text. As frightening tale destined to become a classic, however, The Un-Dead is too anemic to bring Bram's popular legacy back from the grave again.
~ emrys
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