Book: Dracula in London

[narcasse]

I recall seeing at least one so-so review of this compilation but I didn’t find it at all bad for the most part. Most of the stories were well constructed little snippets of Dracula’s outings in London and were consistent with the entire Dracula mythos.


Tanya Huff’s To Each His Own Kind was the kind of Dracula story that I’d always wanted to read even before I realised it. It was self-contained, illustrative of the character and very nicely done. It was the perfect introduction to the anthology, capturing Dracula’s attitude and the way in which his anonymity in a foreign land had consequences that he’d overlooked beyond it’s liberating him from being known for who and what he was.

Fred Saberhagen’s Box Number Fifty was of a completely different tone to the story that preceded it. Beginning without the appearance of Dracula at all it followed two other characters who set the stage for Dracula’s appearance and had reason to be where they were doing what they did. Even the ending had a pleasant tone to it which didn’t jar with the entire theme. This was an incidence of Dracula living or not as the case may be, by his own rules which had their own sense and logic in which nobility obliges a great many things.

Wolf & Hound by Nigel Bennett & P. N. Elrod was a story I looked forward to having read P. N. Elrod’s Ravenloft novels. It was suitably intriguing, again being another tale that began without Dracula himself and instead featured a supernatural adversary. What did annoy me about this story initially was the feeling that I was missing far too many pieces of the puzzle regarding the character of Sabra but having looked at P. N. Elrod’s official site she seems to be an occasionally reoccurring character who’s fleshed out in other series.

The Dark Downstairs by Roxanne Longstreet Conrad was another nice take on things that didn’t involve Dracula personally till much later on in proceedings. By this point I was a little wary of characters implied to be from the British Isles of non-English ethnicity but as it turned out the Welsh identity was a cover for the villain which worked well enough, though I’ve got to wonder what sort of person can’t recognise a general Welsh accent as being at least distinctly Welsh and not Eastern European when they live in the United Kingdom. Aside from that, this story filled in some details around novel events nicely and gave a good sense of the servants being just as effected by events as their masters.

Judith Proctor’s Dear Mr. Bernard Shaw was in a word: beautiful. This was a absolutely breathtaking piece elegantly told and with just the right tone to cover, from an external viewpoint, the tragedy of Dracula’s existence.

Elaine Bergstorm’s The Three Boxes was an interesting piece by the author of Baroness of Blood, a Ravenloft novel that did what Carnival of Fear attempted in telling a more political story rather than a supernatural one. This story in particular I’d hold up as an example of introducing a modern-minded female character into an environment that historically wouldn’t have tolerated the idea of gender equality and doing it well. Researched, well-handled and written with an eye to the time the heroine, a resourceful suffragette, is an antidote to all those odd tales where modern attitudes are shoehorned into an inappropriate environment with the end result of completely destroying the context. She does of course meet a sad end but that only highlights both Dracula’s more noble sentiments and his tragic adherence to the letter of the law without tolerance for variation. He does both good and evil but always on his own terms and by his own standards.

K. B. Bogen’s Good Help with reference to the Francis Ford Coppola film was really quite humorous. It was also very well placed to lighten the mood after the sad story preceding it, providing a tale of Reinfield’s comedic incidental intrusions into Dracula’s affairs.

Jody Lynn Nye’s Everything to Order was the one story that didn’t feature Dracula either being the sole object of the narrative by another character or through his presence. In fact the entire story revolved around a shopping trip by his three brides. It captured their attitudes to a foreign country and how different their attitudes appeared to the Englishwoman who waited on them. There was also a brief reference to the classic mythology surrounding Dracula’s brides in so far as two of the three appear to be mother and daughter. This was in fact the funniest story of the anthology.

Chelsa Quinn Yarbro’s Long-Term Investment was a turn for the serious following the previous story, revealing Dracula’s merciless, predatory nature again. If the previous two stories made Dracula a humorous character who was rather good-naturedly made the butt of the joke this tale was a reminder of his cruel methods for dealing with servants who failed him.

Bradley H. Sinor’s “Places for Act Two!” was another story that revealed Dracula’s ancient code of honour with a touch of humour in proceedings. It also featured, to my delight, Mycroft Holmes briefly at the close of an investigation. Sadly, since my copy is an uncorrected proof I am actually missing a section of this story and I’ll have to flick through a final print copy at some point to make up for it but other than that this was a reasonably entertaining tale. The print issues with this uncorrected proof also confirm my suspicions that at least one of TokyoPop’s published novels most definitely hasn’t been edited and that it’s the uncorrected proof that’s been mass published.

Beast by Amy L. Gruss & Catt Kingscrave-Ernsten could have been a good story but was derailed by bad referencing and right at the end, an awful pun. I was actually interested in the story when it began despite the fact that it appeared to be about Dracula’s father: the Dragon himself rather than his son. Though I do admit that that gripe might fall into the Herzogtum Pedanterie because I’m sure the general Dracula mythos has failed to make the distinction before and it’s easy to miss if you’re not completely anal about language to the point where you know that the ‘a’ on the end of the word changes its meaning from ‘dragon’ to ‘son of the dragon’ and that you could also add ‘eşti’ to make it either a place name or in modern times, a family name. Cumulatively though: the problems just multiplied. I could overlook a terminology issue because I’ve seen that happen before and even one incidence of a completely made up curse: ‘Ballocks’ which seemed at first glance to be a typo for ‘bollocks’. Then it happened again and again to the point where I suspect that one of the two authors genuinely thought that ‘ballocks’ was an actual word. Then again this story also had a Scottish character using American slang for no apparent reason, directing it at, bizarrely enough, another British character which was par for the course considering the quality of the dialogue. Then, to round off the cavalcade of How To Get It Wrong, there was a Good Omens reference inserted seemingly for no other reason than because the authors were patting themselves on the back for being clever and then the big reveal which was that famous Western occult name-drop that, without context or reason, will without doubt convince me that the person dropping said name is a fucking idiot, and in retrospect makes the title an overtly ‘clever’ reference too. It was very ‘so, you’ve discovered the existence of Western occultism… just like every other fourteen year old’. And if that wasn’t bad enough the last line punned badly on the name of the esoteric order that the above mentioned gentleman was famously kicked out of just to hammer the bloody obvious home. There really was no sense of setting and with the anachronistic language and attitudes and if I’d read this as a piece of fanfiction I would have been quite certain that the author was writing a ‘sassy’ Stu. Of all the stories, the Dracula featured here had very little sense of character and I quite imagine that the authors would have written the same tale if the villain of the piece had been Wilbur Whateley or Azalin Rex. Thus all I can hope for is that, since I have an uncorrected proof, an editor caught this utter tripe before it was published and either scrapped the story entirely or made whoever was responsible for all the failures take them out again with the admonishment that this was not the way to go about starting a literary career.

The placing of Julie Barrett’s A Most Electrifying Evening directly after the aforementioned exercise in how to get it wrong leads me to believe that P. N. Elrod was quite aware that the prior story was trash but still included it as a favour to a family member or friend, or possibly even has a warning to idiots trying to get into the industry because this story is an exercise in getting it right superbly. This story makes references, two Sherlockian ones in fact, includes an actual historical figure, makes mention of said personage’s background by showing and not telling and even includes a reference to Colonel Moran’s weapon in The Adventure of the Empty House. This is another story that involves Dracula acting chivalrously, though for his own reasons and regardless of Dracula’s own focus, doesn’t like the prior case, try to push him out of the limelight.

Gene DeWeese’s An Essay on Containment is a short piece in journal format featuring what could easily be a Tzimisce elder dealing with the problem of Dracula’s rather dramatic entrance into English society. There’s no confrontation or explicit talk of one but there is the careful manipulation of long-term pawns in the great game played by all Kindred.

Berserker by Nancy Kilpatrick is one of the stranger pieces and the only one written in the second person. It’s strikingly bizarre as a result and deals with Dracula as a link in the food chain, as a being who understands the battle between the natural world and humankind. I’m not quite sure how I feel about the use of the second person here, especially when the ‘you’ is Dracula himself but I imagine that it works as more of a surprise in comparison to the style of all the other narratives and that a good portion of what I found jarring about it was due to things like Deathtrap Dungeon and other choose your own adventure books.

Curtain Call by Gary A. Braunbeck took a turn for the surreal. It was stranger even than the prior tale because it dealt with the idea of a literary creation becoming real due to the force of the creator’s will and the collective consciousness of millions of readers. This is an idea that’s been done plenty of times before but this was a suitably macabre and at the same time sombre twist on it. This is also the only story that features Bram Stoker as a character himself.

Lastly Bill Zaget’s Renfield, or, Dining at the Bughouse was another strange and yet compelling piece. Charging the history of Renfield with a split between his internal narrative and what he actually manages to say aloud. I’m not sure I agree that this is a suitable background for Renfield considering that before his ill-fated trip overseas he was presumably entirely stable enough to hold down a job as a solicitor and was trustworthy enough to be sent overseas to handle business transactions with a foreign aristocrat. Still, this background does work rather well with the tone of his later delusions.


Overall, Dracula in London does what it says on the tin. There are a collection of stories detailing what it is that Dracula may have been doing the rest of the time while he wasn’t chasing after Lucy or Mina and being hounded by Van Helsing and comrades. Most of the stories contain enough of a thematic to hold the reader’s interest easily enough and the fact that this is an anthology makes for an enjoyable byte-sized read at odd moments or before bed. This wasn’t the height of literature but wasn’t really meant to be so my only recommendation would be that if you don’t like the Ravenloft novels for what they are, various takes on old archetypes, then you probably won’t like Dracula in London either. Otherwise, if you don’t mind a little easy-reading horror, then this is worth a look. Possibly even more straightforwardly: if you can answer the question of who would win in a case of Dracula vs. Strahd with ‘it depends on whether or not they’re in Barovia’ then you’re likely to enjoy this.



Also: some Estonian ruins near Haapsalu courtesy of ru_abandoned.
And the obligatory Carol of the Old Ones via necronomiphiles on this fine Eris Eve.

And finally: does anyone want $10 off a paid account purchase? I have ten of these coupons if anybody wants one.