I bought Dracula about a month ago to read over the summer. I wasn't sure what I would find, the vampire legend now has been so distilled, concentrated, watered down and otherwise repeated that what parts of it are inspired by this novel and what parts are not is impossible to say.

One thing that made me interested to read Dracula was the way it was written, as a selection of diary entries. I was interested to see how that worked out, because human memories aren't perfect and I figured the goal of a novel written that way would be to present a tapestry of fragments which would give a story that at times would be disjointed, desperate, and quite frightening.

Before I get into my disappointment with this, I should mention the positives. The first four chapters are very thrilling. There is a constant sense of danger. On a few occasions I even disbelieved my own memory of the novel as presented to me in movies, certain that Jonathon Harker was to die at the beginning of the story.

It does what I expected of the novel. The opening journal entries were quite monumental and well remembered, but as the time in the castle wore on, his journal entry length got shorter, more disjointed, and more desperate. It was great writing and had me very excited for the remaining 23 chapters. However, Stoker never returns to this level of writing for the rest of the novel.

As soon as the seen switches to London, (England anyway, Whitby ...) ... things begin to take a turn for the worst. Journal entries seem to last for pages, recalling every painstaking detail. It never returns to the desperate, faster paced writing of the first four chapters, not even close. While there are some nice additions (newspaper clippings), from here on the book reads like a conventional novel with the occasional bit thrown in to remind us that we're reading journal entries. It turns out the most supernatural thing in Dracula is the memories of the lead characters ... ' /> .

Also ... instead of having things happen, as was happening in the Castle, we get long scenes where our 'heroes' sit around and discuss what they will be doing. In fact, the novel falls into a pace of 'discussion of action ... action ... discussion of result and subsequent action ... action ... '. After the death of Lucy, this pace is so predictable it sucks all the intrigue and horror out of the novel. It feels like our band of heroes are invincible, I never got a sense that any of them was in danger, and this feels like a great flaw.

One of the three lovers of Lucy should've died somewhere, before the very end of the novel. This is a great failing. Art or Quincy of Dr. Seward ... one of them really should've died, preferably as a result of the failure of one of their missions, or just the Count flexing his muscle and showing a bit of superiority over the 'heroes'. That would've made everything a lot more interesting. Dr. Seward would've been an excellent choice for Death, since his point of view is used so much, it would've really shocked the readers.

But no ... our heroes simply never feel endangered, and by the time something bad does happen, it's literally the last page of the book (Quincy Morris's death). Indeed, even Mina, despite having the vampire curse on her, never turns rogue, which I fully expected (thanks for leading me astray, "Dracula, Dead and Loving It" .

Anyway, that's my long winded feelings about the book. Super promising beginning that falls into a pit of long winded expository dialogue with little action and development in between.