Hands Down My Favorite Book!

I've listened to this book 3 times now and each time it's just as thrilling and suspenseful and beautiful as the first time I heard it! Bravo to the author and narrator!

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2 people found this helpful

Great story from Mina’s point of view

The author retold the Dracula story from Mina Harker’s more romantic perspective that brought into play the many conflicts, emotions and desires She has between the world of the living and her undead lover.

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redhat queen

I have read Dracula the book. This was so much better to listen to the story from this author’s point of view. The narrator was just fantastic.

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Good! But that ending....

Honestly this was a good one. It’s a nice spin off of Dracula. But I have to say *SPOILERS!* the ending? Like come on. I wasn’t to happy with it. Why can’t D get the girl? Ugh. Ok enough with that. Over all the story was good. Just wasn’t happy with the ending.

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Far Better Than I Thought or Hoped For!

On the whole, I can't stand fanfic, especially the sappy, amateur romantic stuff that proliferates the internet now. Generally I just steer clear. There has always been an exception in my mind, and that is Susan Kay's Phantom, of which Audible seriously needs to acquire an audio version. In the past 6 years or so, there's been an abundance of "Phanfic" out there telling the would-be sequel to The Phantom of the Opera, and most of them are anywhere from average to complete suckdom. The only stand out one is The Phantom of Manhattan, which is based on the original story idea by Andrew Lloyd Webber that he couldn't get to work, but then got to work some 20 years later in the form of Love Never Dies. Regardless, the stand out novel here is Phantom, which not only builds and expands on the original story, it's actually written far better than the original work and allows you to get inside the heads of the characters and explore the psychology of the story. It remains to this day as one of my all-time favorite books, and it's the book by which I judge all expansions of classic Victorian-Gothic literature.

Thing is, Dracula has the same problem, and it's because of Phantom that I held out hope of one day finding "THE book" that would go deeper and give me more. The original novel is perfect... for about 4 chapters, then it suffers quite a bit from being in a hurry to tell the story. There's no real expansion of anything. But the idea is brilliant. A lot of stories have been written since the book hit public domain. Some of it tries to concentrate on the Dracula / Mina story, some of it tries to focus on the monster hunt, and some of it tries too hard to be the sequel to the story. The Historian isn't bad, and the same holds true for the "official" sequel, Dracula The Un-Dead. But none of it stands out.

Now that's changed in my mind, because of THIS book. On a whim, I spent one of my Audible credits on a book that I could only assume would be a terrible shipper's squee-fest, and I figured that if it were, I could exchange it and get my credit back. Let me tell you about this book! It's not only beautifully told by a writer with a superior understanding of character development than Stoker, it also greatly expands on the original novel, especially on the characters of Mina and her husband Jonathan Harker. This book spins the familiar tale from Mina's perspective in such a way as to tie up some of the loose ends and filling the gaps to make sense of what Stoker only hinted at. And as a bonus, it's written with that Victorian sensibility in mind, so it fits as a companion work to the original novel. Is it a romance? Yes and no. It deals with the romance that's presented in the story, but it comes across more as a psychological study that masterfully tells how Mina could fall for the Count. Her backstory is called into play here, and everything just builds so well. But what's truly amazing to me is that in the course of exploring the romance and conflict within Mina, both sides of Dracula are explored. We get both the man he might have been (Vlad the Impaler notwithstanding) and the monster we know him to be. The love triangle takes center stage as a result, but it's less about the relationships and more about why the characters act and react as they do. Syrie James has clearly studied Stoker's original, and her love of the story shows through. It's not perfect, but it does shift the camera angle to include so much more of what we knew had to be there, and it does it very well.

Then add in a top level performance by Justine Eyre, who not only changes her voice between all of the characters, but eerily enough matches a few that I've heard in a couple different film versions.

All in all, I am truly impressed. A hardcopy of this book will find its way to my library shelf before long just on account.

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9 people found this helpful

I love this book

Captivating love story between Mina and Dracula. I could hear the wonderful music and visualize scenes in my mind from Bram Stoker's Dracula from 1992 throughout the whole book...with the twist of looking at everything through Mina's eyes. Fabulous!!! I've listened to it twice now.

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WELL DONE

Well written and well narrated! This is my first book I’ve read by Syrie James and I am looking forward to reading more by her.

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loved it

loved it!! kept my attention the entire book! will listen to it again soon!!!

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I think I preferred to the original

it was a interesting to see original story from another point of view. I vastly preferred Nikoli to Jonathan, and not merely because I have a weakness for bad boy's. He encouraged Mina to spread out more than was acceptable for women of the time. Mina and Jonathan were childhood friends who married. Mina and Nikoli were a man and woman who met and fell in love with each other. If you are a fan of the original Dracula you will enjoy this. Narrator is fabulous and story is solid. 4 1/2 stars

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3 people found this helpful

Interesting in the beginning, drags in the middle, but good ending

If you've seen the movie Brahm Stoker's Dracula, this novel sticks very close to it, but of course from Mina's side of the story, but if she had been in love with both Dracula and Jonathan. (Caveat: I haven't seen the film since it came out-- quite awhile ago-- so forgive any discrephrancies.)There are also deviations-- no explicit sex scene with Lucy, he obvious hair color change of Mina, more backstory of both Jonathan and Mina, Mina finding out about her parents-- but mostly sticks to the movie's plot line. The book explains the differences by either Mina having her private journal, lies/untruths two characters agree to collude in, and a few points which seem to be just to keep the pace a little tighter in the plot. I very much like the movie regardless of the lack of strong female roles, so I thought the idea of Mina's side of the story and a secret love affair between her and Dracula, rather than her being merely entranced by him, made for an interesting story, although the middle of this book does drag a bit. The more I listened to this book follow faithfully along to the movie, the less interesting it became so the middle part drags the most as it seems to be mostly waiting for the men to move their plot line ahead. It would have been better if the book either went into more detail about what Mina discussed with Dracula, or skipped past it faster, one of the two. In the movie they add fast music, short clips of action scenes, etc in a novel you can't so it's hard to keep a good pace so perhaps here is where the author should have deviated from the movie more. All in all, a pretty good book, with an interesting ending and a refreshing take on Mina's side of the story.

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