"

Shockingly, not a whole hell of a lot of vampire stuff up in this bitch.
Mostly, it read like a dull travelogue with lots of emotions.
Bro love everywhere.
All the men loved all the women (platonically or otherwise) to the point they were willing to give their lives for whichever lucky lady was Dracula's snack at the time.
It was quite the love fest.
Quite frankly, I'm not sure I'm buying that, Stoker.



And Dracula?
Not since Gary Olman's beehived old woman portrayal have I been less scared of this character.


Welcome to my home. Allow me to get you some Entenmann's coffee cake whilst you peruse my garage sale knick-knack collection and trip over my cats...

So, I've come to realize that very few of the classic characters or stories even remotely resemble what you think they will based on their modern counterparts. And in my uneducated opinion, most classics just aren't all that much fun to read. They're boring and filled up with tedious shit that I don't care about, and certainly don't want to read about. <-- Scenery, weather, random feelings about the scenery or weather, etc..
I guess back in the day it was high fun to take walks, look at the landscape, and then go back home and write about it in your diary. And while I'm sure that sounds like heaven to some people who yearn for simpler times, the idea of reading about the nonsense of someone else's daily life makes me want to scratch my eyes out.



Something I was surprised by, although in retrospect I shouldn't have been, was all the religious undertones in the story. Ok, yes. I knew Dracula was evil and couldn't be near crosses and whatnot, but I didn't think about this being a casually religious story about saving souls from damnation.



Which, I mean, it's not like it was any fault of the vampires that they were dammed. At one time or another, they had all been humans who were targeted by another vampire as a snack. Vicious cycle and all that.
And poor Lucy seemingly ended up a chew toy simply because she was a sleepwalker.
Perhaps the moral of the story is that you need to make sure you aren't wandering around on moors at night so you don't get spotted by anemic monsters?



Speaking of Lucy, did anyone else notice how incredibly fucking lucky she was that every single guy in their group was a compatible blood type for her? All those blood transfusions! None of them even remotely hygienic or safe.
Forget supernatural demons who turn into bats - those transfusions were the scariest shit in this entire book.



Brace yourself, because there are a lot of characters and POV switches. Again, most of what they were saying wasn't all that interesting, so it made me doubly happy that I decided to go with the audiobook version of Stoker's tale.



And if I'm being 100% honest here, I probably zoned out a few times and daydreamed about when I needed to get the oil changed in my car or what we were having for dinner. But this is one of those books with a lot of superfluous information, so I don't think it hurt anything. I got the gist of it all okay without hanging on every word.



Fair warning, the first half of this book is unbelievably dull.
Mina writes in her diary about how she fretts over Jonathan's lack of letters from Transylvania & how hard it is to keep Lucy from wandering out the door at night, Lucy gets mysteriously ill & her fiancee gets worried, and the doctor dude (John Seward) moons over Lucy & watches one of his psychotic patients eat bugs.
Renfield, being the only character in the book who doesn't want to talk about friendship & loyalty every five minutes, was by far my favorite.



The second half of the book was only slightly more engaging to me, but at least there was a bit of urgency to it at that point. Van Helsing was on to Dracula, so garlic was being thrown over everything, stakes were being handed out like candy, and anything pertinent was being kept from Mina so as not to upset her delicate sensibilities.
And then when that backfired spectacularly, they cut her into the loop and she was able to do an old-timey version of what a competent woman looked like. They even compared her brain to that of a man! <--I love these old books. Really.



And what about Dracula?
Well, he was sort of this shadow figure that lurked around the edges of the book. You never really meet him. I know, right?! What about the whole Vlad the Impaler thing? How he fixated on Johathan & Mina for some reason?
Buzzz! Nope.



Ok, get this: Dracula had been sort of like a special needs zombie who was finally learning stuff - like math...and how to employ minions to carry his dirt around for him. Apparently, up to this point, he had just been harassing his neighbors and nibbling on Romanian women. This whole thing with Lucy & Mina was supposed to be his bid at going global.
Thank god for Van Helsing and his wacky foreign-man knowledge of urban legends.



I guess one of the oddest things that I realized about this horror story was that when Lucy & Mina started turning toward the dark side, they got sexy.
Yeah. Like, that was how you could tell they were creatures of the dammed. The men got all freaked out and weepy because their sweet, mild-mannered ladies lost their wholesome looks. They became wanton hussies with throaty voices and pouty lips.
Holy shit, right? If that doesn't say something about how wackadoo things used to be, I don't know what will.
Innocence or else!



Anyway. This wasn't really a fun read but I'm glad I can finally say I've managed to put it behind me. Plus, it's one of those weird little windows into the past that reminds you things aren't as bad as they could be. I'd definitely recommend listening to the audio version with Tim Curry & Alan Cumming if you decide to go that route. The entire voice cast of this one really helped make it palatable for someone like myself who doesn't have the fortitude to read classics on their own."

"Might have been a better story without the hillbilly alien girl narrating the entire thing.



The elephant in the room really is King's tendency to use 40 words instead of 5.
It was ok for the first few issues because you're setting the scene for everything. But beyond that?
Oh. Oh my. That's a lot of goddamn word bubbles there, sir. And the story just went on forever.
Swear to god, I thought everything was wrapping up around issue 5 (I was reading it as single issues on DC Infinite), so you can imagine my utter shock when I get to the end and realize I have THREE MORE of these long-ass issues to go.



And Ruthye Marye Knoll was just the worst way to have to get your information. Some kind of weird speech pattern that was a cross between old-timey mountain man, and the alien version of what someone who isn't from the South thinks the southern dialect sounds like.
Just fucking awful.
In small doses, she could have been a quaint addition to the story, but with nothing but walls upon walls of text with her as the narrator it was torture.
Then again, one of King's big claims to fame is having once been in the CIA. Perhaps they used to let him tell long rambly tales and "do annoying voices" to break the prisoners' will at Guantanamo?



The ENDING.
What? That was the weirdest most dogshit ending ever. Maybe I didn't understand what happened but I read it several times trying to see if I had missed something.
And it turns out that I did.
Finding out the real ending made me lower my rating because if you have such a confusing ending that Screen Rant has to explain it to, then fuck you.
(view spoiler)[Here was what I originally thought happened:
So they stuff that disgusting asshole in the Phantom Zone for a few hundred years. When he comes out, he's rehabilitated. He's so sorry for what he's done he grovels at her feet for forgiveness.
AND THEN RUTHYE KILLS HIM?
What?
I had no problem with her killing him. He deserved it. 1000xs over the dickhole deserved it. But it was a complete waste of time to rehabilitate him. Was that supposed to make it more impactful when she killed him?
It didn't. Just kill him.
He's a waste of space and let's not spend more time on that than necessary.



Here's what actually happened:
I can't add links, but someone sent me Screen Rant's explanation for the ending that says Ruythe felt bad for fabricating the ending (in the book she wrote) that Supergirl killed him. She did this at Supergirl's request so that Krem's friends would only focus on getting revenge on Supergirl.
When he gets out of the Phantom Zone, Ruythe only cracks him on the head with her cane.
But with the fake ending of the book, subterfuge about the Phantom Zone, coupled with the silhouette setting, and the fact that Krem doesn't get back up, it looked to a lot of people (myself included) that she had killed him.
(hide spoiler)]
But.
Pretend this had been edited and condensed, anyone besides Ruthye narrated it, and the ending was different?
I actually liked the core of Supergirl's story. Show me what this badass bitch can do!



I also liked the art style. It may not be everyone's jam but was one of the best things about this one in my personal opinion.
Everything else? I don't know. I'm sure this will have a lot of fans but it was a bit too long & tedious for me."