Review of Dracula The Un Dead

Dracula The Un Dead
Dacre Stoker-Ian Holt
Penguin Group
432 pages
The stage is set, the characters have gathered and we the readers are very fortunate indeed to be able to witness the production. The time is 25 years after the grand adventure to Transylvania the characters are the survivors of that adventure with the addition of Quincy Harker and the production is non other than Dracula.
Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt give us a new twist on the old story of Price Vlad Dracula. We get to see how the characters have faired in the past 25 years and we get to see the return of the most infamous of villains, but is the villain who we are led to believe or is there something or someone more sinister to deal with. And we get a rare chance to meet the author of the first novel as a character in this one.
Mr.’s Stoker and Holt have given readers a most remarkable piece of literature. Fully intending it to be a sequel to the original written by his great-granduncle. They have hit the mark. How many times do we as readers wonder what becomes of the characters after their happy endings, how many times do we wish to be a fly on their wall to see them after the story has ended for us. Well now we get to do just that. In this rendition of Dracula we find ourselves in Europe just after the turn of the century and are able along with the characters in the book to discover the wonder or in some cases the disgust of the technological advances in the early part of the last century. We get to experience the culture of England and we get to share in the horrors of what’s happening there. The characters are vivid and interesting and follow very closely to the feel we remembered from the original work. Quincy Harker makes an absolute wonderful hapless hero in the novel, followed closely by Mina and of course our Dark Prince. The authors have taken every care in learning their characters every nuance and delivered it onto the pages of their novel with care and expertness. The story/plot is unique and exciting filled with intense mystery and abject horror, they take your senses through many emotions not many of them easy to read. But read you will because this is a page turner, with dialogue that fits with the time, that describes the scenes so vividly that the reader can easily picture it in their minds and those pictures aren’t for the faint of heart.
So ask yourself. Are you prepared to be scared witless? Are you ready to believe again in the myth of Vampires? Are you ready to experience fear like you never have? Are you ready for a can’t put it down page turner, a nail biting edge of your seat adventure? And are you prepared to have everything you’ve ever believed about Dracula to be shot to hell? Well if so and with a note from your doctor saying you can withstand the stress be prepared to read one of the best novels of 2009.