Bram Stoker – Dracula’s Guests
March 11th, 2011 by James Staynings
A collection of nine short stories and one novel guaranteed to leave a bad taste in our mouth which – fortunately – isn’t blood.
I’ve not read Dracula, but after reading this anthology I’m more likely to trust Stephanie Meyer with giving me a decent story about vampires. You can tell this won’t be a glowing review, in the same way I found out that this would be a bad book when the editor’s introduction clearly told me that Bram Stoker wasn’t a very good at writer…Pity she didn’t write that on the cover as it could have saved me some money. It didn’t help me, especially considering I read the introduction last. But I can’t really blame old Bram for my disappointment. Especially considering he didn’t even publish this anthology.
My distain for the book really doesn’t lie with its short stories, which although slightly dated by today’s standards of guts and gore horror are a mix of well-crafted gothic tales, with the occasional hit of genius. Indeed, the book starts promisingly with the very imaginative ‘Dracula’s Guests’, which although doesn’t contain any vampires (at least in their human form), works well in what is an early example of more psychology than shock-tactic horror. It deals with unnamed man’s misadventure on his way to see the famous count. It’s probably the best story of the book and definitely one of the best written. The imagery is wonderfully colourful and made the story play in my mind like an old Hammer Horror film…and I’m talking Christopher Lee-style horror, baby. (note to self; don’t use that word again).
Secondly is ‘The Judge’s House’, a story of a student who rents a house that was once owned by a pretty nasty judge who, now dead, haunts it with an army of vicious rats. The ending can unfortunately be seen from a mile away, but it’s still entertaining and unlike some of the later tales, well-paced. Again the most impressive feature is the tales’ imagery and atmosphere.
‘The Squaw’ follows; it’s a story that’s very much an animal revenge tale with a bloody ending. The dialogue and flow of the narrative is sort of out-dated and unrealistic but the ending is enough to satisfy both masochists and PETA.
Both ‘The Secret of Growing Gold’ and ‘A Gipsy Prophecy’ are slightly less-enjoyable, the former is perhaps the worst of the short stories and the latter has one of the most satisfactory endings but doesn’t hold the same grace as the previous stories. ‘The Coming of Abel Behenna‘ likewise continues the downward trend. It’s a parable that would no doubt have gone down well with a young Victorian audience, but (due to age more than style) it feels cliché and outdated. ‘The Burial of the Rats‘ is perhaps the best of the latter stories, yet it contains a ten page street chase that at times causes the reader to lose interest.
‘A Dream of Red Hands’ and ‘Crooked Sands’, although interesting in their subject matter, do not excite beyond being readable. As a collection of stories it’s a mixed barrel with some stories which suffer the curse of time more than style and Stoker’s writing ability.
What ruins the collection for me is ‘The Lair of the White Worm’. Overall it reads like you’re looking at the work of a blind backstreet butcher. The editor has unmercifully sliced and diced the book down from its original 324 pages down to 220 pages, which makes the text at times read like the ramblings of a man on his death-bed (the editor’s words and not mine – perhaps trying to excuse their own efforts in the unflattering introduction). At times the story is difficult to follow and makes you wonder if the rather boring, lengthy passages were left in, what was taken out? Upon doing my own research it seems such things as one important plot element involving a character we never met before. The way the novel is edited makes the plot seems illogical, and it therefore sometimes contradicts itself or makes little sense.
I don’t usually hate editors, as my editor will hopefully testify to with some witty remark in brackets (Witty remark? Me? – Ed), but this novel is a prime example of the power writers sometimes lose when they’re dead, and some clumsy editors decides to ‘do it better’ and re-writes entire books. It’s a case of one bad apple spoils the entire barrel…one bad editor ruins a perfectly decent anthology.
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