I enjoyed but wasn’t over the moon with Dracula, but I decided to give Mr. Stoker another chance. I was glad that this book wasn’t done in the epistolary style of his most famous work. After the initial set up of an Egyptologist suddenly fallen ill and mysterious circumstances surrounding the incident I was intrigued. After that, the book’s momentum stalled. . The book seemed a bit repetitive with the premise of it’s intrigue while doing some surface level character development before springboarding into the latter part of the book with a tacked on romance that felt anything but organic.

I really thought that Mr. Stoker might have turned things around but the story and the dialogue became quite stagnant and exposition laden again. There were interesting themes and concepts that could’ve been explored more, but weren’t. The prose often fell flat and more than a few characters seemed like cardboard cutouts. And then the ending. Perhaps the definition of anti-climactic. I found that there were actually two endings for the book, and while the original ending is better it ‘s definitely more of a whimper than a bang.

All in all, it made sense that Dracula is the more famous of these novels, and having not particularly enjoyed Dracula I think Mr. Stoker just isn’t for me.