Dracula The Un-Dead

By: Dacre Stoker & Ian Holt

Penguin

After one hundred and twelve years Bram Stoker’s great-grand nephew, Dacre Stoker (aided by Ian Holt) and using Bram’s own unused notes, decided to write a sequel to the original classic.

In Dracula The Un-Dead we catch up with the characters introduced in the original twenty-five years later.  Mina and Jonathan now have a twenty-five year old son, Quincey Harker.  Dr. Jack Seward is addicted to morphine and consumed with guilt and mania.  Arthur Holmwood, grappling with his own guilt, is angry and a shadow of his former self.  And Abraham Van Helsing is a weak decrepit old man close to death himself. 

Trying to shield her son from the truth of the past, Mina is eternally youthful and somewhat estranged from her alcoholic husband.   

Much to the disappointment of his parents, Quincey leaves law school to pursue his dream of performing on the stage.  Therein he meets the infamous and mysterious actor Basarab.

As mysterious events start to take place, it seems as if Dracula has returned to hunt down the band that defeated him twenty-five years earlier.

It is interesting and albeit a little shocking to see what has happened to the heros we met in the original Dracula.  And in this one we see Dracula as a more sympathetic character. 

Dracula is not the main villain in this story.  Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt include the real life legend of Countess Elizabeth Bathory, a Hungarian Countess who was known as the Blood countess in the sixteenth century.  There were legendary accounts of the Countess bathing in the blood of virgins in order to retain her youth.  They draw her as being more sinister and evil than Dracula himself.

The common feeling I kept getting while reading this story though, and confirmed after I read the Author’s note on how this novel came to fruition, was that Dacre Stokers name was just put on the cover to sell more books.

As well, there are a few plot lines that I felt were just thrown in and they seemed a little odd, like the one that closes the book.  I wouldn’t call this a true sequel.  However this novel is an interesting expansion of the classic story and I really did enjoy it.  Definitely for those who love Dracula or vampire novels.

Story                ***

Characters        ***

Readability        ****

Overall rating    ***1/2



www.draculatheun-dead.com/

Back in Time

The Accidental Time Machine

By: Joe Haldeman

Ace Books 2007

The Accidental Time Machine is a story unlike most time travel stories.  It’s not about going back in time to see your parents meet, or going into the future to see what your life will be like in 35 years, it’s not even about seeing the earth as a futuristic society.  Matt Fuller is a research assistant at MIT.  When one day, while working with a proton calibrator that measures subtle quantum forces that relate to time changes in gravity and electromagnetic force, the calibrator disappears then reappears a second later.  Every time he pushes its button, it disappears twelve times longer than the previous time.  After examining it Matt is convinced that what he has discovered is a time machine.  After testing it with a pet store turtle that he affectionately calls Herman, Matt realizes that he has to try it for himself. 

I like that the time machine itself wasn’t a thing to actually stand in or ride in.  The time machine is just a small box that, when connected to something metal, can carry with it anything that is touching it.  That gave such a fresh perspective on the traditional model for a time machine.  Haldeman doesn’t let the story get too bogged down in technical jargon, and the story starts right from the first page.  However I did have a feeling that I wanted to know more about how the time machine works, and what makes time travel possible, but I don’t think that is really the point of the story.  This novel is more about a man trying to figure out what he has discovered and its possibilities.  Matt takes the journey of his life, and the different societies that he visits are completely different than anything I have see in other time travel stories, and he offers some interesting insights into how it is possible for societies to evolve over time.  However there was a bit of reoccurring stuff about Jesus that I didn’t quite understand.  Nothing in this story is what you expect it to be and I found it to be thought provoking and, despite its subject, a nice light read.

Story               ***

Characters       ***

Readability       ****

Overall rating   ***

    

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