While I think it generous of Harper Collins to offer a free preview of this book, I can already tell it's one I will have serious issues with (not that this will stop me from reading all of it, or from throwing it across the room -- repeatedly -- once I have a hard copy). The amount of *headdesking* enacted within the first chapter, especially on page twenty-four, does not bode well for my acceptance of this book.
Granted, I have a certain appreciation for anyone who takes on the daunting task of adapting Dracula in some form. I merely have an obsessive nature surrounding this novel which renders me incapable of turning that appreciation into sympathy for the writer's struggle when they murder the themes and characters of the book.
In short: I explode with snark.
Early running commentary through the samples 80 pages available:
- Dancing with Dracula? Going on a boating date (complete with casual notice that he doesn't reflect in the water)? Dreaming of Dracula on the ship as it crashes into the harbour, hearing him lustfully call out, "My love!" and whisper, "I am coming for you!" like Edward Fairfax Heathcliff Cullen... makes me want to heave, especially since it reduces Mina to a Victorian Bella Swan.
- So Dracula is like a HOTalian... an angel marble cupcake Adonis of mysterious and dangerous European hotness. Sure, if I ever get my wish to have the perfect Dracula it will be difficult to ever take one's eyes off him. That doesn't mean the overpowering sense of foreboding and danger which curls off him like his own mist will be ignored. Beautiful and mysterious does not equal harmless. That inexplicable feeling that your lunch is being tossed around in your stomach on an vessel during a storm? Yeah, I'm feeling that without having to get out of my seat on solid ground.
- Woman, if you italicize something one more time to get a point across especially about how mesmerized Mina is by Dracula's lusciousness, I'm going to scream.
- "I must have read Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre a dozen times!" And there we have the root of Mina's problem... He's read it, too?!?! Oh, heaven help us.
- Of course... it has now been hit upon: Dracula just wants to be loved. Cue the cheesy studio audience 'awww'ing as if this were a particularly heartwarming moment on Full House. Confirmation comes a little later in the book, but it is there nonetheless. Whether this is his true motivation or not remains to be discovered, yet the simple fact that he tells Mina this causes a swelling wave of nausea to overtake me.
When I buy this book, as sadly I will, I believe I shall have to take before and after photos of the book's condition. Something tells me it may resemble Joseph Andrews* by the time I finish it.
*I actually broke the spine on my paperback copy of JA which I had to read for a college lit class. Even after following my prof's advice of reading it out loud in silly, female Monty Python voices I still had issues getting through the book.
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