Review: Draaaagula
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 05 16, 2014
A British solicitor is summoned to Transylvania by a mysterious count to assist with a real estate transaction, only to be held prisoner for some time in a castle. Some time later, in London, his wife's best friend dies from a mysterious loss of blood. When she rises from her grave, a group of her friends determine the count has turned her into a vampire and set out to destroy him.The story is thin. The writing drags on endlessly. Every new thought a character might introduce is preceded by an incredibly lengthy speech about how important what I'm about to say is, what proof I have to back up what I'm about to say, how I reached the conclusion of what I'm about to say, and so on, which each of those sub-points being repeated at least three times before they actually say anything. Whole chapters are spent with the characters sitting around talking about their plans to find the count, how they arrived at those plans, how important it is that those plans are carried out, etc., and then the next day they only take one baby step forward in their pursuit and start over discussing everything from scratch, constantly rehashing everything they've learned up to this point.Dracula barely appears in the book. It's hard to believe this became the template for a whole subgenre of horror. Stoker's writing makes Stephenie Meyer look like a literary genius.I was halfway through the free Kindle edition from Voltage Spike when Simon & Schuster put out a free Kindle edition of their own. If you're looking for a free version to read on a Kindle, the Simon & Schuster version is the one to get. The Voltage Spike version is horrendously formatted, making this already boring text even more unreadable. So thank you to Simon & Schuster for the vastly improved formatting.