Author: John Green (and Bram Stoker!)
Publisher: Dover Publications
Rating: WORTHY!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new novel is reward aplenty!
I reviewed the original Dracula back in January, and not favorably. It just wasn't up to scratch, and the audio book version was read appallingly badly, which never helps, of course. However, this is such a storied story that when I got a chance to review a graphic novel version, I flew at it like a bat out of Castle Dracula, and I'm happy to report that I wasn't disappointed this time.
John Green (not that sad-ass John Green fortunately, but a talented and artistic one, wrote this, otherwise I would never have asked to review it!) took the venerable tale and ran with it and did a bloody good job! The illustrations are so finely drawn that the artist may have used incisor teeth as pens....
The story features crisp line drawings that do a really polished job of illustrating the text, which itself is sparse and cuts to the chase - sometimes literally! How the heck he managed to parse that tome down into this essence, or even quintessence, is as mysterious as it is impressive, but it’s all there, and I much prefer this decimated version to the unexpurgated.
The author also has a charming turn of phrase here and there, too. One which particularly stood out for me was where he wrote, "..dark side of twilight…". I thought that was beautifully said. The original Dracula had some notable phrases of this nature, too, but the only one I recall from it was where Van Helsing and his team were about to enter the tomb and slay Lucy Westenra, and one of them courteously offered another the opportunity to go first. The writing said, "There was a delicious irony in the offer, in the courtliness of giving preference on such a ghastly occasion," (Dracula p313) and it was so memorable that I can quote it verbatim to this day.
The only complaint I had about this is one I've had about several graphic novels: the use of the white space on the page. In an ebook, it doesn't matter, but in a print book, we're talking about dead trees here, and how many of them we're going to kill to make a print run, since this isn't going to be printed on recycled paper as far as I can tell. There is a large amount of white space around the margins, which means this graphic novel could have had smaller dimensions and maybe saved a few trees? Maybe there are good reasons for this, but my hope is that writers and graphic novelists will appreciate how important trees are and make best use of the space upon which they purvey their art. OK, pet peeve off!
This graphic novel is really well done, well illustrated, beautifully written, and well worth the reading. Now I have to wonder if John Green (not the sad-sack John Green who trashes indie authors, but the artistic one) is going to grace us with other classics or if this is just a one-off?
