Wow, this year is full of piece of shit reads. I had no idea what was coming from this novel to be honest, so I didn’t even know that the whole book revolves around the legend of Dracula. Wasn’t Bram Stoker’s enough? I suppose this is another addition to the vampire lore that has been plaguing the already cluttered with crap shelves of bookshops everywhere. Thankfully, I picked this up from the ground where it belongs in a book swap meet, the only thing that it sapped me with was almost a week of my time.
Well there goes another cute Dracula story
The story is pretty messy. A diplomat single dad (who it seems, have infinite amounts of money to travel) lives with his annoying teenage daughter who recently found a book which landed right on her lap, with a nice big fat dragon in the middle. In fact, the same thing happened to her father some years before, which scared the shit out of him. Her father, Paul, had an professor who also found the book but was scared shitless because the deeper he got into the story, the threats to his life became more and more real.
I’m not going to summarise the rest of the story for you because I simply can’t be arsed. There are three intertwining stories here from different generations, all of them searching for Dracula’s tomb. Sure, the premise is great, but the more you get into it, the more you realise that this is pretty cheap fiction that you can literally pick up right out of the ground. Oh wait.
The Historian scrapes the bottom of the barrel
The main issue I’ve got with the book is the fact that it’s pretentious as fuck. It’s like that one dude who’s lived and traveled to Europe, Swaziland, Sahara and Youranus and just couldn’t shut up. He doesn’t even tell it well. Call it a travelogue sure, but every chapter is a new city, new sights to see, and every time Kostova writes about these cities you just can’t help to wonder if she’s ever going to shut up. Just shut the fuck up hey.
And even though there are many characters in this book, they all feel generic. This is not really a new thing. If you look at the novels out of the same genre, let’s say Da Vinci Code, it suffers from the same insufferable boring-ass but trying to be badass characters. You can’t really give a shit about these people. You just can’t. And you gotta read about them cunts for 700 plus pages.
The plot is full of conveniences that remind you — oh right, I’m actually reading a badly written novel. Sure the book says that coincidences happen for a reason. But that’s the fucking problem — that’s just lazy writing. The whole thing is easily readable within a few days because the writing is fucking lazy. There are no sentences here that make you go wow, yeah, that makes me feel things. You won’t feel good things reading this.
Just watch Castlevania, it’s better
If you’re obsessed with vampires and travelling to Europe and brag about it constantly, by all means pick up this shithousery. It’s like reading a cheaper version of Dan Brown, which isn’t great to begin with, or watching a long ass latter Indiana Jones movie with a way too old Harrison Ford. There is one positive out of all this though — that it makes me appreciate the game and series Castlevania more, because the legend of Vlad Țepeș, Wallachia and the fact that he’s one scary ass motherfucker is better told in the series. Therefore, just watch Castlevania the series and skip this book entirely.
