Dracula’s Child – review

Author: J. S. Barnes

First Published: 2020

Contains spoilers 

The Blurb: Evil never truly dies... and some legends live forever. In Dracula's Child, the dark heart of Bram Stoker's classic is reborn. Capturing the voice, tone, style and characters of the original yet with a modern sensibility this novel is perfect for fans of Dracula and contemporary horror.

It has been some years since Jonathan and Mina Harker survived their ordeal in Transylvania and, vanquishing Count Dracula, returned to England to try and live ordinary lives.

But shadows linger long in this world of blood feud and superstition - and, the older their son Quincey gets, the deeper the shadows that lengthen at the heart of the Harkers' marriage. Jonathan has turned back to drink; Mina finds herself isolated inside the confines of her own family; Quincey himself struggles to live up to a family of such high renown.

And when a gathering of old friends leads to unexpected tragedy, the very particular wounds in the heart of the Harkers' marriage are about to be exposed...

There is darkness both within the marriage and without - for new evil is arising on the Continent. A naturalist is bringing a new species of bat back to London; two English gentlemen, on their separate tours of the continent, find a strange quixotic love for each other, and stumble into a calamity far worse than either has imagined; and the vestiges of something forgotten long ago is finally beginning to stir...

The review: A sequel to Dracula, this novel is set in 1903, so no longer in the Victorian era and past the fin de siècle, and includes the presence of certain original characters (Mina and Jonathan’s problems are laid out in the blurb, Arthur has married, Seward now runs a practice out of Harley Street and – not a spoiler – the elderly Van Helsing suffers a medical emergency at a gathering of the friends and is holding on to life) and styles itself in the epistolary form of the original novel. The voices of the original characters resonate in a way that they echo the original but seem older, more careworn. And, importantly, I was rather taken with the story it laid out.

The book is a slow burn at first, but Barnes manages to capture an uncanny atmosphere that holds you until the conspiracy (and it is just that) starts to build and the book’s gears shift up and a full horror narrative begins. The lore is primarily Stoker’s – though Barnes shifts the sunlight rule so that younger vampires are impacted by it in ways Dracula was not. There is additional however, such as how Dracula is reborn and it does owe a debt (albeit the mechanics do differ) to Hammer and Taste the Blood of Dracula.

Definitely worth your time, and my thanks to Ian who got me this as a birthday present. 8 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK