August 29, 2016
Screenwriter Duncan (Mr. Holland’s Opus) knows how to pepper a story with cinematic fight scenes and lush descriptions, but in this alternate take on Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the massive lump of backstory proves indigestible. Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, contrary to canon, has preserved his monstrous nemesis for future scientific study. Life, love, and war delay his research until he’s goaded to action by Nazi depredations in Romania. With the help of Jonathan Harker’s grandson (who’s dallying with Van Helsing’s daughter, Lucy, on the side), Dracula is resurrected and proves remarkably amenable to bargaining: he gets freedom and all the Nazi blood he wants, so long as he focuses his hunger on “the Hun.” It’s an enjoyable Faustian contrivance—and takes 100 pages to launch. En route are interminable journal entries, military reports, and even a novel within the novel, all designed to fill the reader in on Nazi atrocities, the resistance to them, and the provenance of the characters. A distracting and sometimes painful variety of print fonts will send readers running for the digital edition. This novel is only recommended for those willing to take a very deep dive into what-if.
Starred review from September 15, 2016
Prof. Abraham van Helsing, now an octogenarian, and his adult daughter, Lucy, are guerillas fighting the Nazi invasion in backwoods Romania during World War II. Their resistance group is largely successful, until a sinister SS agent takes control of operations and begins summarily executing resistance fighters. Van Helsing has only one option left: resurrect Dracula from his lair and recruit the vampire to their cause--because, above all else, Count Dracula loves his homeland. Together with a young John Harker (grandson of Bram Stoker's original Harker), a brain-addled Scottish explosives expert code-named Renfield, and a band of Romany fugitives, the van Helsings and Dracula shoot, blow up, and shred their way through Nazi strongholds--until the Fuhrer himself gets wind of what is transpiring in Romania. Drawing on the same epistolary form that Stoker used for his 1897 Dracula, Duncan (screenwriter, Mr. Holland's Opus, Courage Under Fire; novelist, A Private War) makes Stoker's characters his own in this enjoyable literary salute. VERDICT On the level of Gregory Maguire's Wicked in terms of rehashing classic literary characters, this entertaining and surprisingly intelligent work might be the most fun book of the year. [See Eric Norton's SF/Fantasy Genre Spotlight, "Imagined Multiverses," LJ 8/16.--Ed.]--Tyler Hixson, School Library Journal
Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
October 1, 2016
Written in an epistolary format akin to Bram Stoker's original, this lively and entertaining mash-up has Dracula aiding Romanian partisans in disrupting German occupation in the early days of WWII. As it turns out, Stoker's novel, often referred to derisively as that book, had it all wrong. Abraham Van Helsing didn't kill Dracula; he only imprisoned him. Nearly 50 years later, Van Helsing as well as his daughter, Lucille, and British spy Jonathan Harker (grandson of Stoker's character) determine that they must free Dracula from his prison to fight the Nazis. Dracula agrees to aid the Romanian resistance, and the group proceeds to wreak havoc on German installations, but they also attract the attention of Adolph Hitler, who would like nothing better than to capture Dracula for his own ends. Amid the requisite blood and goredone well and oftenthe author intertwines romance, humor, and an examination of Dracula's psyche into the adventure. Contrary to the title, there is no great battle at the conclusion, leaving the possibility that these two iconic evils may meet again.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)