Crouch, Blake et al.: Draculas

  Amazon  

Draculas, released just in time for Halloween, is a collaboration by four authors--Blake Crouch, Joe Konrath, Jeff Strand, and F. Paul Wilson. It's not a series of short stories but a complete novella, told from numerous points of view. Reading it, I didn't notice any changes in writing style that would betray its Frankensteinian genesis. Draculas gives the vampire legend a rationalistic, modern twist: vampirism is a communicable disease, easily spread, quickly debilitating to the human host. The means by which vampirism is reintroduced into the modern world in the story is very clever: a vampire skull is unearthed in Transylvania and purchased by an eccentric millionaire, who plans to use it as more than a conversation starter. After this introduction, however, the story unfortunately morphs into a litany of carnage, which is tiresome. If you can get beyond the excess of gore, however, there's actually a good story here and some decent characters and, surprisingly, some genuinely moving scenes.

Joe Konrath warns in his introduction to the book that the vampires within are not sexy teen heartthrobs, and so they are not. Indeed, they hardly seem vampiric in the traditional sense, except in their lust for blood. They behave more like wild dogs--savage, ravenous, repulsive wild dogs. This is...well, it's okay, but for me it takes away much of the appeal of the vampire legend. I don't want my vampires to sparkle, mind, but surely the fact that they can (in most conceptions of them) pass as human at least part of the time makes them particularly interesting monsters--and that dangerous seductiveness doesn't hurt. So for me the whole vampire aspect of the book was disappointing. Still, it's an interesting take on vampirism, and a nice example of the malleability of the vampire legend.

Comments

[Brooke]

1.

Ooh! This'll be perfect for a Halloween read! Love a good scare!