Author: carllyons

Not at all what I expected, and all the better for that.

It’s interesting reading this and reflecting upon the influence it
still has from Buffy to Twilight to True Blood. The darkness of the
Un-Dead (Stoker’s original title) must have been a real shocker at the
time – there are some wonderful and twisted ideas on there.

That said, it’s not in the same league as Frankenstein or The Strange
Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (which I kinda put in the same camp).
Those are also original and impactful, but are much tighter, pacier
novels.

At 500 pages, Dracula is crushingly overlong – it desperately needs
some, er, blood letting – and the sexism really grates, even for
Victorian times.

A splendid old-fashioned yarn that isn’t remotely spoiled by having seen any of the movie adaptations.I love the escapism and simplicity, of course, but I particularly enjoy how polite everyone is.

The plot pursued me on our Scottish road trip, with dramatic scenes from Iona to Appin

I start every holiday with the new Lee Child book. The Die Hard-esque plots are reassuringly familiar and well-written enough to be real page turners