Alternate "History" -- Dracula Meets Jack the Ripper!

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	• Anno Dracula Kim Newman Avon Books (Mm), 1994 - 416 pages average customer review:based on 24 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Super Reader

An excellent book. Kim Newman puts his own spin on a turn around a Wold Newton style universe. He also has a bunch of sneaky 'now who was that' style cameos, a la John Myers Myers' Silverlock.

Dracula has found another way to be in charge in England, by marrying in to the royal family. To prevent problems, he has had the Great Detective thrown in a prison camp.

So when a serial killed called Silver Knife is killing vampire whores, it falls to the Diogenes Club to investigate. Vampires heal normal wounds, but not silver. The investigation uncovers a lot more than just a chain of killings.

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Alternate "History" -- Dracula Meets Jack the Ripper!

Kim Newman's "Anno Dracula" has one of the most audacious plots imaginable -- let's assume that Bram Stoker's "Dracula" was non-fiction, and that Dracula defeated his nemesis, Van Helsing. Then, let's assume that Dracula "seduced" Queen Victoria and is now the Prince Consort, effectively ruling Great Britain. Throw in Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Jekyll, John Merrick (the Elephant Man), Jack the Ripper, and even a brief reference to the Lone Ranger(!), and you've got one heck of an amazing world to spin a yarn.

Newman's Victorian England is populated by vampires and "warm" humans, and there is little shame in being a vampire. But not every vampire becomes a "lord of darkness" -- Newman shows many vampires scraping by, selling themselves just like the "warm" cheap harlots of London's lower neighborhoods.

In that murky world, Jack the Ripper is butchering vampire prostitutes, using vicious silver blades. Two kindred spirits, the "warm" adventurer Charles Beauregard and the ancient vampiress Genevieve, pursue Jack and seek to put a stop to his diabolical ends. Beauregard works at the behest of the mysterious cabal known as the Diogenes Club, a group dedicated to the removal of Dracula's power, while Genevieve chases Jack out of mercy, trying to save the vampire-girls Jack seems hell-bent on savaging.

Newman packs "Anno Dracula" with action, unlike other "alternate vampire histories" (granted, a limited genre) like Brian Stableford's "Empire of Fear." Beauregard's prowess with a sword is easy to grasp, but Genevieve, an "elder" vampire even more ancient and powerful than Dracula, has powers far beyond the grasp of even other vampires. And even Genevieve meets a vampire that she cannot fend off for long, a Chinese horror sure to give more than a few readers nightmares.

A detective story that takes place in a London ready to explode in civil war where the "warm" take on the vampires and the vampires fight among themselves, "Anno Dracula" is a lark. Packed with enough gore and gothic eroticism to satisfy the vampire afficionado, "Anno Dracula" rarely goes over the top and manages to stay fairly grounded. A terrifying climactic stand-off between Beauregard, Genevieve, and Dracula ends ominously - Dracula is still out there, and he's not going to take his lumps lying down. Here's looking forward to the next in the series!

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What if Dracula Won?

The power of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula will probably never be matched as far as vampire stories go, but Kim Newman makes a valiant attempt to write an equally interesting tale. Certainly, the premise of Anno Dracula, and its two sequels, is both postmodern and daringly original. What if, Newman asks, Dracula had taken over England, rather than being destroyed by Van Helsing and his companions? The novel depicts a surreal London where Dracula has conquered England, not solely by terror but political alliance--he has made himself Prince Consort by marrying Queen Victoria and making her a vampiress. This premise for a novel could end up to be ridiculous, but Newman pulls it off by distancing the narrative from Dracula's character.

While Stoker's Dracula and Anne Rice's vampire novels are written in first person, Kim Newman avoids giving readers deep emotional connections based on fear of Dracula, which providers a feeling of security for the reader, although it is also a fault of the novel. Dr. Seward has managed to escape Dracula's revenge, while Van Helsing and Jonathan Harker have been destroyed by Dracula, and Mina Harker is a minion at Buckingham Palace and Lord Godalming has himself become a vampire. Dr. Seward's diary entries are the only first person narratives in the novel, and they are sparsely interspersed among the chapters (Stoker's Dracula was completely written in first person in the diaries and letters of the characters). Seward's narratives bring the reader closest to the tone and feel of Dracula. The rest of the novel in third person makes it difficult to connect to the characters who are so abundant and so undeveloped it is impossible to keep track of any of them except the vampiress Genevieve.

Fans of Dracula, especially those wanting scary thrills like the film versions provide, will be disappointed, that Dracula does not appear until the very end of the novel--oddly something Elizabeth Kostova in The Historian also chose to do, and which makes both novels somewhat anti-climactic and a let down. By comparison, Stoker allowed Dracula to take main-stage through many scenes in his novel.

Because of Dracula's basic absence from the book, I doubt any reader will experience nightmares. Yet the novel does have an effective atmosphere of doom, where vampires and "warm" people walk about London together, like two political parties, the "warm" holding out against converting to vampirism (one wonders what would happen if all the warm became vampires--who would the vampires then feast on?). The characters meet vampires in the streets and at drawing-room parties, and while there is some political unrest over the vampires' presence in the land, it is merely a social problem, and not a major threat to the nation.

The student of late Victorian times will enjoy meeting old literary favorites and historical people ranging from Florence Stoker to Oscar Wilde, Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Jekyll and Dr. Moreau, Lord John Roxton, and Beatrix Potter. The plot centers around trying to track down Jack the Ripper, who is out murdering vampiresses, to the alarm of the vampire establishment. Newman effectively creates the atmosphere of this mixed warm and vampire, fictional and historical world. And while the reader has to wait until the last chapter to see Dracula, the climax at Buckingham Palace is powerful and worth waiting for, and intriguing enough to make one want to read Newman's next vampire novel, The Bloody Red Baron, set during the First World War.

- Tyler R. Tichelaar, author of Iron Pioneers, The Marquette Trilogy: Book One

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Fangtastic

1888 London, and Dracula is hanging out with Queen Victoria, while in Whitechapel, prostitutes are dying strange bloody deaths...

It's obvious that the author had a lot of fun writing this, and I had just as much reading it. Historical fact mixed with Newman's particular sense of whimsy and walk on parts from fictional characters from the Victorian era, it's a tremendous mixture.

The ending comes a bit too quickly, and old Drac becomes a bit of a comic parody of a vampire lord, but all in all I loved it.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

In an alternate history of the nineteenth century, Queen Victoria has married Vlad Tepes, better known as Count Dracula, leading to a reign of terror, while, in Whitechapel, Silver Knife, a murderer of vampire girls, threatens the new regime. Reprint. NYT.

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