Dracula, by Bram Stoker

Dracula is the godfather of all vampire books... or so it's said, anyway. As will inevitably happen, I've picked up snippets of what this book is all about simply from being in tune with pop culture over the years- the cheesy vampire flicks on TV late at night, the ghost stories told around campfires, and the allusions made by other works of fiction included. After Twilight and Dead Until Dark, it only seemed fitting that I trace the phenomenon back to its roots (not counting common mythology and the historical background of Vlad the Impaler).

I had heard somewhere that Dracula was a dull, tedious book. I'm not usually a fan of the writing style where the narrative is carried out through letters and diary entries, but oddly enough it seemed to work for Dracula and to make the book more interesting. The reader gets a chance to look at the monster from many different angles, not to mention the secondary characters, who are revealed through their writing. Because of the changing viewpoints, Dracula continued to entertain- even when long expostulations by some of the characters could have made it drag.

I had also heard that Dracula was very anti-feminist. I didn't find it overtly so. Dracula is a product of the times in which it was written certainly- women were meant to be the domestic homebodies, content to make a comfortable house for their families and not to venture outside of those confines. When Mina Harker is praised for having a "man's brain and a woman's heart"... yes, that grated a bit, but as the story progresses the reader sees the men involved giving her a lot of credit for her toughness and ability.

My nitpicks with the book would be certain parts that I felt were just fluff- Mina and Lucy's conversation with the old sailor, for instance. I didn't see that it added to the book at all and removing it during the editing process probably wouldn't have hurt the overall flow of the story.

I also felt that the ending was pretty anti-climactic. There was tremendous build-up to the confrontation with the Count, then roughly two pages at the end where the protagonists are actually dealing with him- and he is asleep for most of that time. There could have been a lot more fight there, what with the Count possessing so many inhuman abilities and with Harker's "affliction."

Overall, Dracula gets three stars out of five. It was an entertaining read, but nothing I'd pick up again, except perhaps as comparison material for other vampire fiction.