DRACULAS Review

Amazon Digital Services, October 19, 2010 (Launch Date)
Kindle Edition, 171 Pages (859KB)
ASIN: B0042AMD2M
Ordering Information:
Amazon

Amazon's Description:

A DYING MAN’S GREATEST TREASURE…

Mortimer Moorecook, retired Wall Street raider, avid collector, is losing his fight against cancer. With weeks to live, a package arrives at the door of his hillside mansion—an artifact he paid millions for…a hominoid skull with elongated teeth, discovered in a farmer’s field in the Romanian countryside. With Shanna, his beautiful research assistant looking on, he sinks the skull’s razor sharp fangs into his neck, and immediately goes into convulsions.

OPENS THE DOOR TO AN ANCIENT EVIL...

A rural hospital. A slow night in the ER. Until Moorecook arrives strapped to a gurney, where he promptly codes and dies.

WHERE DEATH IS JUST THE BEGINNING.

Four well-known horror authors pool their penchants for scares and thrills, and tackle one of the greatest of all legends, with each writer creating a unique character and following them through a vampire outbreak in a secluded hospital.

The goal was simple: write the most intense novel they possibly could.

Which they did.

A Word of Warning:

Within these pages, you will find no black capes, no satin-lined coffins, no brooding heartthrobs who want to talk about your feelings. Forget sunlight and stakes. Throw out your garlic and your crosses. This is the Anti-TWILIGHT.

I'm well aware of each of these four authors, Jeff Strand, Blake Crouch, F. Paul Wilson and J. A. Konrath under the pen name of Jack Kilborn, but haven't had the privilege of exploring each of their individual works which is why I consider this a real treat. I want to first point out this is not the combination of several tales in one book. DRACULAS is the combination of four authors talents in to one story. The debut collaboration from four of the genres finest authors. Their take on the vampire myth (hence the title). No lovey-dovey Twilight twerps. These are vampires at their most primal. Get in their crosshairs and consider yourself dead.

This is quite refreshing after all the romanticism vampires have become thanks to Twilight, Vampire Diaries and even True Blood. In DRACULAS, they're viewed as the monster they really are. Multiple POVs should really be left to the experts. This book is an example as to why. The story contains POV shifts between over ten different characters. Each is very crisp. All details between each character lines up with the others. Didn't see any major problems with this. The pacing is fast and steady. Characters are engaging and yes, they had to throw in a vampire clown. The story wouldn't be complete without one. And there is plenty of bonus material for readers and writers alike to drool over. However, I do have a couple of drawbacks.

There were a couple of misspellings (since been corrected, I have been assured). I can overlook a couple but not thirty. I didn't understand why after turning in to the Dracula creature why none of them beelined for the blood bank. They retained some rational thought while craving blood. That would be the first place I'd look for a good meal. Yet, I don't recall any of the DRACULAS creatures actually doing it. I wasn't totally sold on the ending. You have patient zero, Mortimer Moorecook, emerging literary as a new man under the guise of Dr. Cook after the infection is "contained". I felt like some of the scenes toward the ending could have been drawn out a little more. I think they shouldn't have cut so much out.

Overall, DRACULAS is a great read for anyone who loves a gore-fest and is tired of the pretty boy vampires.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Black Aggie

Image
First of all, I would like to wish everyone a Happy Horror Day. Later on tonight, you will have a chance to win 1,000 BlogMad credits. Keep checking for that. Now on to tonight's first story. Henry Adams hired American sculpture Augustus St. Gaudens to construct a memorial for his beloved wife, Marian "Clover" Adams who committed suicide after the death of her father. After four years, the piece was finished in 1891. It was never officially named, but it was mostly known as the "Adams Memorial" and later "Grief". Stories vary as to how it received that nickname. The statue was so fascinating that a sculpture named Eduard L.A. Pausch copied it. The statue would go to be named "Black Aggie". General Felix Agnus purchased the copy in 1905 to place at his family's tomb. Then had a monument and pedestal created that would closely match the setting of the Adams Memorial in Washington. No one knows exactly why he chose this statue. A year later,...
Read more

Reader Submission - The Creeper

Image
There is a true life story, about a little boy at the time called Richard. Richard was baker/acted into the Waverly Hills Sanatorium WHGC way back in 1967. The two doctors and three nurses that were present in the ECT room on August 20th 1967 9:32 am, all signed and swore it to be true. The Creeper actually manifested inside the ECT room, and shrouded the child from electrocution. They also say the child had entities all around him while in his stay. Richard was said to be one of the most powerful Clairsentient Empathetic children, to ever walk threw the Waverly Hills Sanatorium doors, and the same goes for the St Albans Sanatorium. My father and his friends have been collecting files, along with me and my team on this child for over 50 years now. All this broke in May 20th 2015 when one of the last living WHGC nurses was found alive in California. She had some how found this child in order to give him a case files she stole over 50 years ago out of the Wood Haven Geriatrics Center...
Read more

Edna Collings Bridge

Edna Collings Bridge also known as Edna Collins Bridge was built in 1922 over Little Walnut Creek. It was the last covered bridge built in Putnam County, Indiana replacing a concrete bridge washed out in high waters. And it's believed to be haunted. The most common story is Edna Collins was a little girl who went swimming in Little Walnut Creek often as she lived nearby. Her parents would drop her off on their way to town. When they returned, they would honk the horn three times to let her know it was time to leave. One day, her parents followed their usual routine except this time Edna failed to respond. Upon searching the creek, she was found dead (allegedly by her father), having drown. Circumstances concerning her death unknown. Variations of this story has her mother following her in death. Grieving over lost of her child, her mother placed a noose around her neck and hung herself. Another piece has her father being the one who built the bridge and named it after his daugh...
Read more