Dracula by John Green and Bram Stoker

Title: Dracula
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?

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Title: Dracula
Author: Bram Stoker
Publisher: Recorded Books
Rating: TBD

This is a movie/novel tie-in. The Francis Ford Coppola movie based on this novel is reviewed here. Also for those interested, the Movie: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is reviewed here. The Frankenstein novel is reviewed here.

Narrated by Susan Adams and Alexander Spencer. These two do a lot better job than that abomination perpetrated by Ralph Cosham on Mary Shelley's novel, but their narration still leaves a heck of a lot to be desired. Adams's voice is far too breathy and "projected". That might work well on stage, but that's precisely why I don't like theater because it is all theater and no reality. Spencer's voice has too much treble to the point where it's harsh, sharp, tinny, and grating on the nerves, and whereas Cosham in Frankenstein was tedious to the point of somnabulance, Spencer is the diametric opposite. He injects way-the-HELL too much melodrama into his "performance" turning it into a joke. Its sad, because this novel is, for the most part, well written and enjoyable, but Spencer all-but ruins it with his insane theatrics.

This one begins in a similar fashion to Shelley's Frankenstein, but instead of letters, we have diary entries, which renders the story a bit unrealistic, but it's passable. Jonathan Harker, a junior "solicitor" travels to Transylvania to the Castle Dracula, where Count Dracula seeks to have someone take care of what business he has tied up with his planned move to London. Note that a solicitor in Britain is a lawyer who handles legal affairs which don't need to be aired in court. A lawyer who does practice in the courtroom is called a barrister. It's possible for a lawyer to be both.

Harker is at first excited to travel, and fills his diary with all sorts of warm observations about the people, the countryside, and the food, but after he settles in at Castle Dracula, he slowly discovers that he's a prisoner there, and Dracula has no intention of letting him leave. He discovers to his increasing dismay that Dracula is controlling the letters he can send, and eventually, Harker discovers that Dracula has impounded his outdoor clothing so Harker cannot leave.

Dracula warns Harker about exploring the castle: he must never fall asleep outside of his own rooms, but of course he rebels against this and discovers that Dracula has three female familiars to whom he feeds a baby one night. Harker is horrified and starts plotting an escape, realizing that if he does not flee he will die at the teeth of Dracula and his blood-sucking frenzied fiendish female familiars.

Once Harker escapes the castle, we move quickly to England where Dracula arrives in dramatic fashion (and in disguise) in Whitby (I've been there done that, but go no T-shirt!). It's at this point that the narrative transfers heavily to the diaries of Lucy Westenra and Mina Murray as they ramble on, mostly about men and gossip. This part (disk 4) becomes quite boring, but having said that, there are several unintentionally funny parts in this novel. One is when the 'creatures of the night' (mostly wolves) are 'singing' and Dracula pauses to listen. He asks a man name Harker to "Hark" (p76)! I thought that was priceless. Later, Mina describes the funeral of the captain of the Demeter and writes of the huge number of sea-faring folk who wanted to take part in the funeral - but that's not quite how Stoker phrases it: "...the owners of more than a hundred boats have already given in their names as wishing to follow him to the grave."! To his credit, though, Stoker does have some interesting and forward-thinking things to say about the "New Women" on page 142.

Lucy Westenra's mother doesn't feature in the movie, but she features strongly in the novel as the architect of her daughter's death though her habit of constantly removing or accidentally destroying the garlic wreaths supplied for her daughter's protection; however, the real architect of her death is van Helsing himself through sheer incompetence. he knows perfectly well what is going on yet he fails consistently to prepare her or her loved ones for her welfare, to warn everyone adequately about what must be done, or to safeguard her from vampire attacks. The single best maneuver which would have secured her health would have been to board up the external door to her bedroom, but no one even considers this! She has no one sitting with her on a regular basis and those who do are not augmented by support from others so that they do not risk falling asleep on her. Sad!

This novel is, like Frankenstein, quite boring in many places, a fact which is in no way ameliorated by the sad narration from either Adams or Spencer. One really big advantage of listening on CD is that it is really very easy to skip to the next track without even having to turn a page!

In the final analysis, I have to rate this warty!

Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl By David Barnett

Title: Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl
Author: David Barnett
Publisher: Tor
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 of any kind for this review. Since this is a new novel, this review is less detailed so as not to rob the writer of their story, but even so, it will probably still be more in-depth than you'll typically find elsewhere!

Erratum in galley ebook
P23 "glitterving" should be "glittering"

The male protagonist of this steam-punk novel is Gideon Smith, a 24-year-old who lives with his father in a small fishing village near Whitby, Yorkshire. Both of my parents hailed from Yorkshire, and I've actually been to Whitby, a seaside town which is featured in Bram Stoker's Dracula, so it’s no surprise that Barnett has Gideon meet Bram Stoker there.

I have to say up front that I'm not a fan of Victorian dramas which seem obligated to drag historical people unnecessarily into the fiction. I find that boring and uninventive, and all-too-often patronizing of, and insulting to the persons so press-ganged. In fact, I made the mistake of reading the prologue to this novel and I found that even more boring and uninventive since it parades out the discredited story that Eddy, the son of Queen Victoria's son Edward (the Edward who gave his name to the Edwardian period of English history) was somehow entangled with the Jack the Ripper murders. This myth was the basis of the Johnny Depp movie From Hell and is patent nonsense. Having said that, Barnett has added a twist to this one which makes his "crime" forgivable, in my book at least!

So, it was not an auspicious start to this novel, but I have to say that Barnett started to win me over with chapter one, where Gideon enters the picture. His father is a struggling trawler captain, and Gideon often helps him on his fishing trips, but the one morning when his father decides to let Gideon sleep in, is the day that the entire crew of the trawler disappears without explanation, and Gideon is left alone in the world, his mother and two brothers having already died some time before.

Well there is an explanation, of course, but that's for you to read, and at that point in the story it was more of a mystery than an explanation (but it clarifies nicely as the novel progresses)! The local fishing community just accepts these disappearances as the sea's dividend for allowing humans to sample its bounty. Gideon is a big fan of Captain Lucian Trigger, a story-book hero who, if not completely fictional, is, I guessed, not remotely like his fictional portrayal. Gideon doesn't quite grasp this, and so he endeavors to contact the man in hopes that he can help with another local mystery that has hold of Gideon's imagination.

It’s in process of pursuing this plan that he encounters Bram Stoker, right before a Russian sailboat runs aground with the all the crew save one, missing. The captain is discovered lashed to the wheel and drained of blood, and a large black dog runs ashore and disappears. The only cargo on the ship is three coffins with soil from Transylvania. Anyone who has read Stoker's Dracula will know where that's headed (but don't be too confident: Barnett has added a twist!). The original Dracula novel is excellently reproduced on film in Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 epic, a movie I highly recommend.

Back to this novel! I do like that Barnett has divorced himself from trope with Gideon. He doesn’t have Gideon go haring off into the heart of the mystery like an idiot. He portrays Gideon as a thoughtful, courageous, and smart young man who realizes that he's going to need help to figure out if smugglers might be connected to his father's disappearance and are operating near his village, but when he talks to a friend of his father's, and also to the village constable, he's dismissed and not taken at all seriously. That's when he resorts to calling Captain Trigger and ends up in the company of Bram Stoker. Stoker learned of vampires from his fellow Irish friend Sheridan le Fanu, but he cannot get Gideon interested. Instead, Gideon resolves to set off for London to personally seek Captain Trigger's assistance. That's when he meets the mechanical girl called Maria who. I guessed. is actually modeled after a real person.

But she isn’t just any old clockwork toy. Nope. She has a body made to look as realistic as possible, and although she's clockwork inside her body, inside her head is a different story. Her creator is Hermann Einstein (which coincidentally happens to be the name of Albert Einstein's father...), but he's gone missing. He fitted her empty head with something that he discovered in a most unlikely location. Her head is no longer empty. Far from it.

Gideon learns how abused Maria is by her keeper, a grungy old man with disgusting tastes, who is in charge of the house in Einstein's absence. Gideon invites her to travel to London with him to find her maker, and she agrees, so they take some spare cash which Maria has access to, and borrow another invention of Einstein's: a motorized bike. This prepared, they set off again for London town, home of Queen Victoria.

Meanwhile Bram is poking around Whitby in pursuit of a vampire, and he discovers one of the very last people he might have expected to find - and she is the very antithesis of what he expected a vampire to be! Little does he know that his investigations will bring him right back into contact with Gideon.

And that's all the detail you get for this one! The story continues apace, and continues to be engrossing, as Gideon and his growing ensemble of acquired friends begin pursing seemingly disparate threads that I felt, even before I knew one way or the other, would all lead back to the same source. There are airships (one piloted by a very adventurous woman), there is a trip to a ancient and exotic location where trouble is stirring big time, there's air piracy, there's a threat to the empire over which the sun never sets, and there are truly evil creatures (and that's just those working for the government!). All the threads lead to a fine yarn, and a taut fabric, and though I was less than thrilled with the ending (the novel is evidently the start of a series), the quality of the writing and the plotting merits this story as a worthy read. I recommend it.