This is a horror classic that I have been meaning to read since high school and I finally got around to it this October shortly before Halloween. Dracula was written in 1897 and is the novel from which all subsequent vampire tales evolve. Stoker writes of the ultimate evil in his Dracula, with no redeeming qualities as in some current iterations of the vampire such as the Sookie Stackhouse series and others. Of course, I have seen several of the movie iterations of Dracula, including the most famous as played by Bela Lugosi in the 1930s, who showed little resemblance to the monster in the novel as described by Stoker as a "tall old man, clean shaven, save for a long white mustache and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of color about him anywhere." The novel is written as a series of entries from journals, diaries, and letters, which I thought was a very effective way of telling the story. It starts out with Jonathan Harker's journey to Transylvania where he has been summoned to arrange for some real estate transactions by Count Dracula. This part of the novel is very foreboding and frightening when Harker learns the true nature of the Count. The novel then shifts to England where Dracula has started his evil plan to feed on all of London starting with Lucy Westenra, a friend of Harker's fiance, Mina. Then the novel evolves into a chase to find and kill Dracula and his minions led by Harker, Dr. Seward, and Professor Van Helsing. Mina also plays a key role in this hunt and is vital to the novel's resolution. Overall, this is one of the classics that should be read, especially for any fan of horror fiction. I also have a couple of sequels to Dracula that I need to get to soon.
