The Other Dracula the Undead

Continued health-related issues again delayed the planned entry on Guy Boothby’s Pharos the Egyptian. I hope readers will enjoy my revisiting (and rewriting of)the second entry in this blog from January 2010 as it predates the greater exposure my work has received since my former association with The Cimmerian or my current work for The Black Gate. I hope to be back up to full speed and health next week. Thank you for your patience.

I belong firmly to the camp of Bram Stoker fan that approached Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt’s Dracula the Un-Dead with great anticipation and left disappointed. Well, actually appalled might be a more apt description of the reading experience. Had I not had my jaws wired shut at the time I read the book, I would have described myself as speechless. Severn House, a small press that has been kicking around for at least forty years when they took over Tom Stacey’s imprint, decided to capitalize on the attendant hoopla of a Stoker descendant co-writing a sequel to reprint an earlier literary sequel with very nearly the same title.

Freda Warrington’s Dracula the Undead was originally published to mark the centennial of Stoker’s classic original in 1997. I was aware of the book prior to its reprinting, but avoided it like the plague at the time believing incorrectly it was comparable to Elaine Bergstrom aka Marie Kiraly romanticized and anemic sequels, Mina and Blood to Blood. There is an element of romance found in Warrington’s book that does not ring true for the Stoker purist, but Ms. Warrington is a gifted British fantasy and horror author who accomplished something few writers can claim – she authored a sequel to a literary classic that doesn’t pale in comparison.

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