Author: Perry Lake
First Published: 2021 (2nd edition)
Contains spoilers
The Blurb: No woman can resist Dracula—and some will love him forever!
Meet the many brides of Dracula—seductive, inhuman beauties who serve him to spread his unnatural dominion. You will feel their crimson lips glide across your skin, softer than a summer’s breeze. You will feel their fangs pierce your throat.
Gretchen, a common peasant, but of rare beauty—what will she do to gain Dracula's love?
Addhema feeds not on blood, rather, she takes the scalps of beautiful girls, draining them of life and supplying herself with endless disguises!
Katya, a beauty who could seduce any man. But dare she defy Dracula?
Despina, a witch whose powers even vampires fear. How will she deal with the Lord of the Undead?
Elizabeth Báthory, the infamous Blood Countess of Hungary, said to have bathed in the blood of virgins to retain her youth and beauty—forever! Eager to gain power equal to Dracula himself, she strives to enslave and control an army of werewolves.
Clarimonda becomes the courtesan to the most powerful man in France, only to catch Dracula's eye.
Plus the novella-length origin of Countess Mircalla Karnstein—the title character of Sheridan LeFanu's classic tale of horror, “Carmilla”. Desired by both the evil Dracula and the brave Baron Vordenburg, Mircalla finds herself the prize they would both kill to possess. These women will love you to death!
The Review: This is the second revised volume in Perry Lake’s The Legend of Dracula series, following His First Centuries. Like that volume this has been reworked and contains additional stories, and like its previous iteration this strengthens the foundation that was built by the previous volume. I do like the inclusion of Addhema, who was the primary and titular character in Paul Feval’s the Vampire Countess with her peculiar vampirism, where she scalps her victims and wears their hair, through which she takes their lifeforce. Just like the first time around, I really enjoyed the prequel (novella length) entry of Carmilla, which works really well. It is admittedly good to be able to report that the volume held its own, to the first read, and actually was improved by the author's revisit.
The style of the stories is centred round a sense of brevity and yet, partly due to using known characters and partly due to the author’s crafting, the brevity works in the book's favour. It should be noted that the stories do, rightly given the title, concentrate on the female vampires, though Dracula is a consistent presence even when he is not directly in the spotlight.
I noted one continuity error that creeped into one of the new stories but it was minor and hasn’t impacted the score (and I’ve informed the author). A strong volume in the series 7.5 out of 10.
In Paperback @ Amazon US
In Paperback @ Amazon UK
2 comments:
Thanks for the updated review, Andy. Hah-ha, yes, I screwed up on Matthias and Thurzo and which was a Catholic and which was a Protestant. That's the great thing about ebooks, though; I can always go back and fix boo-boos.
One of those things but noticeable because, whilst in different stories, it was within pages but - as I said - minor thing, not score factored and, as you say, easily fixed.
Thanks for the stories :)
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