Author: Perry Lake
First Published: 2021 (2nd Edition)
Contains spoilers
The Blurb: Dracula and his vampire hordes plot and scheme to enslave the world and rule the Night!
Dracula hacks and slashes his bloody way to the top of the undead hierarchy as he wages his final battles against the seductive Nycea, and the cunning Erlik Iblis, and the slithering Sethos. Plus the origins of Varney the vampire, Lord Iorga, Lady Lenore, and Countess Dolingen. Will Dracula be able to stop any of them?
There's further clashes with the Vordenburg family in the tale of the son of Dracula—a dhampire! Can the heroic Vordenburgs trust a man in whose veins flows the blood of Dracula?
Then in a novella-length trilogy, set on the eve of the French Revolution, Dracula allies himself to the sorcerer Cagliostro—whose powers are equal to his own! But how long will the alliance last when Dracula sets his sights on Cagliostro's beautiful young wife? Can even the powerful Cagliostro stop Dracula's plans?
Find out in these seventeen stories.
The Review: The revision of Lake’s Dracula Arisen in this volume, like book 1 and book 2, there is modification, changing of order and new stories – a volume in which Dracula perhaps appears less (at least in some stories), becoming more the shadowy force manipulating the board.
The writing in this is Lake’s strongest thus far, with a pleasant crispness to the prose. He throws the kitchen sink concept wise and the blurb above covers a lot of these but doesn’t mention the inclusion of Frankenstein also. The use of Lenore adjusts Gottfried August Bürger’s Lenore (1773), which was quoted within Dracula, and makes it a vampire story, indeed making Dracula the embodiment of death portrayed within.
One aspect I particularly liked was the description of the internal changes when someone is turned, of the growth of a parasitic other within the body (particularly the heart) taking the personality and memories of the victim from the brain but dislodging the soul.
I do need to mention the essay the author has put in the rear of the book, which argues the idea that Stoker was much more aware of Vlad Ţepeş than current thinking suggests, and based the character on him (rather than simply borrowed a name and a paragraph of biography). My own thoughts are in detail here and align with those of the late Elizabeth Miller and there is nothing within the thesis that would shift that position. Ţepeş is a part of the Dracula megatext and thus it is legitimate to use the character within the author’s contribution to the megatext, ie the stories, but the coincidence he focuses on as evidence (between an aspect of Ţepeş’ life and the broad brush of the novel) is more pareidolia than alignment I’d say (sorry Perry) and – in honesty – neither enhances nor detracts from what Lake did with his prose. For that prose (and not impacted by my view on the essay conclusion), a solid 7.5 out of 10.
In Paperback @ Amazon US
In Paperback @ Amazon UK
Dracula hacks and slashes his bloody way to the top of the undead hierarchy as he wages his final battles against the seductive Nycea, and the cunning Erlik Iblis, and the slithering Sethos. Plus the origins of Varney the vampire, Lord Iorga, Lady Lenore, and Countess Dolingen. Will Dracula be able to stop any of them?
There's further clashes with the Vordenburg family in the tale of the son of Dracula—a dhampire! Can the heroic Vordenburgs trust a man in whose veins flows the blood of Dracula?
Then in a novella-length trilogy, set on the eve of the French Revolution, Dracula allies himself to the sorcerer Cagliostro—whose powers are equal to his own! But how long will the alliance last when Dracula sets his sights on Cagliostro's beautiful young wife? Can even the powerful Cagliostro stop Dracula's plans?
Find out in these seventeen stories.
The Review: The revision of Lake’s Dracula Arisen in this volume, like book 1 and book 2, there is modification, changing of order and new stories – a volume in which Dracula perhaps appears less (at least in some stories), becoming more the shadowy force manipulating the board.
The writing in this is Lake’s strongest thus far, with a pleasant crispness to the prose. He throws the kitchen sink concept wise and the blurb above covers a lot of these but doesn’t mention the inclusion of Frankenstein also. The use of Lenore adjusts Gottfried August Bürger’s Lenore (1773), which was quoted within Dracula, and makes it a vampire story, indeed making Dracula the embodiment of death portrayed within.
One aspect I particularly liked was the description of the internal changes when someone is turned, of the growth of a parasitic other within the body (particularly the heart) taking the personality and memories of the victim from the brain but dislodging the soul.
I do need to mention the essay the author has put in the rear of the book, which argues the idea that Stoker was much more aware of Vlad Ţepeş than current thinking suggests, and based the character on him (rather than simply borrowed a name and a paragraph of biography). My own thoughts are in detail here and align with those of the late Elizabeth Miller and there is nothing within the thesis that would shift that position. Ţepeş is a part of the Dracula megatext and thus it is legitimate to use the character within the author’s contribution to the megatext, ie the stories, but the coincidence he focuses on as evidence (between an aspect of Ţepeş’ life and the broad brush of the novel) is more pareidolia than alignment I’d say (sorry Perry) and – in honesty – neither enhances nor detracts from what Lake did with his prose. For that prose (and not impacted by my view on the essay conclusion), a solid 7.5 out of 10.
In Paperback @ Amazon US
In Paperback @ Amazon UK
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