Dracula, Mina
I finally read Dracula, followed by the 1994 sequel Mina (written by a woman, Marie Kiraly).
In Bram Stoker’s novel, Mina is so smart but also so pious. [And pieces of the story, especially the end, were so “A Hole in the World” (Angel 5.16). /Whedon!geek] And Dracula is not nearly the attractive romantic antihero he becomes in later incarnations. (He’s mostly really creepy and off-putting.) So i was puzzled as to how Ms. Kiraly was going to believably pull off a novel with jacket copy that implied she was still haunted by the dark passions of Dracula love or whatever.
As it turned out, she does a wonderful job of retelling the ending of Dracula as Mina understood the events and then telling what happened after Stoker’s novel ended, still primarily from Mina’s point of view. And she says lots of interesting things about freedom and blood and life and faith.
In Bram Stoker’s novel, Mina is so smart but also so pious. [And pieces of the story, especially the end, were so “A Hole in the World” (Angel 5.16). /Whedon!geek] And Dracula is not nearly the attractive romantic antihero he becomes in later incarnations. (He’s mostly really creepy and off-putting.) So i was puzzled as to how Ms. Kiraly was going to believably pull off a novel with jacket copy that implied she was still haunted by the dark passions of Dracula love or whatever.
As it turned out, she does a wonderful job of retelling the ending of Dracula as Mina understood the events and then telling what happened after Stoker’s novel ended, still primarily from Mina’s point of view. And she says lots of interesting things about freedom and blood and life and faith.