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Dracula The Un-Dead: review

Not too long ago I posted about the upcoming release of Dracula The Un-Dead by Dacre Stoker and the fact that he was coming to Dublin to hold some talks on the book. Sadly I couldn’t make it to the talk but I have just finished reading the book.

Having only recently read Dracula for the first time I was really excited to read this ‘official’ sequel, approved by the Stoker family. In my previous post I had mentioned that the format was the same as the original, a story told through a series of letters, telegrams and diary entries. However, this is not entirely true. Although letters, documents, diaries and telegrams do play a part in Dracula The Un-Dead, the story is told through the authors narrative.

The story picks up twenty five years after Dracula has been defeated by our band of heroes in Transylvania. Mina and Jonathan Harkers son is grown up and at college. He is oblivious to the dark, evil tales that lurk in his parents past and is merrily engaged in trying to best his father by becoming an actor instead of a lawyer. That is, until his parents past catches up with him.

Despite the fact that I had read Dracula relatively recently, there were things referred to in the book that I did not remember from it. I must re-read them both one after the other.

I found Dracula The Un-Dead very engaging and easy to read. A definite page turner, I was always anxious and interested to see what would happen next. Without giving anything away, it is more gory and bloody than Dracula in a huge way with body parts, blood, guts and entrails playing a much bigger part than they ever did in Dracula which I don’t remember being really bloody at all, in fact.

If you enjoy tales of horror and darkness, bloodlust, murder and evil then you will probably enjoy Dracula The Un-Dead as it has all of the above in abundance. If you are looking for a part two to Dracula, it is not really that in my opinion. It is written in a very different way and there were a certain few things that to me, were incongruous with the original. But I can’t say anything without giving away one of the basic elements of the book!

So read it and tell me what YOU think of it!

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