A fun and imaginative take on the Dracula mythos with an engaging female protagonist.
In Graham’s (A Monstrous Romance, 2019, etc.) novel, Meg van Helsing has a dangerous adventure in a world of monsters and heroes.
It’s 1919, and Meg knows that “That Book” by Bram Stoker is far from a work of fiction. She’s always at the ready to vanquish supernatural horrors with weapons in hand, a crucifix around her neck, and her closest friend, Chessie, by her side. When their pal Quincey Harker disappears one night, it’s only the start of a dark chain of events that’s connected to a group of six friends who defeated the infamous Count Dracula 25 years ago. Soon Meg and her allies are fighting off increasingly vicious monster attacks and eventually receive the support of the Monmouth Royal Academy of the Teratological Sciences and its researchers, including the dangerously charming Gheorghe “Geordie” Apostol. Geordie has a dark secret, and his knowledge of sorcery proves to be essential in understanding—and fending off—the dangers that they face. The dangers mount, and bodies fall, as Meg and her friends confront an occult enemy with a hidden agenda. Graham imagines a world in which the characters who vanquished Dracula, and their descendants, combat evil under the tutelage of Abraham van Helsing (Meg’s uncle) and Mina Harker (Quincey’s mother). Graham deftly explores Meg’s closest relationships, especially with Chessie, the daughter of Arthur Holmwood—yet another of several characters from Stoker’s novel, which will appeal to fans of vampire lore. The close, loving bonds between the various players are among the novel’s greatest strengths. Meg is coded as asexual, and her budding relationship with Geordie is carefully developed, exploring the protagonist’s romantic feelings without erasing her sexual orientation. Overall, the book manages to successfully balance the mystery, horror, and historical fiction genres, although it’s perhaps a bit overlong.
A fun and imaginative take on the Dracula mythos with an engaging female protagonist.Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-946233-01-1
Page Count: 433
Publisher: Qui Est In Literis
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
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PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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