Now I really enjoyed the novel to begin with because I liked all the different points of view as well as the two different story lines converging into one. It was full of action and suspense all the way up until the scene we see Mina being forced to drink Dracula's blood. After that the book went down hill. Even the death of the Count, which was so anticlimactic that it made me want to cry, and Quincy Morris could help it. Not only that but by the end of the novel all of the most interesting characters had either been killed or turned so annoying that I couldn't bring myself to care what really happened.
I loved Mina Harker at the beginning of the novel, even though I thought she was a bit dead when she thought the marks on Lucy's neck were from a pin. I think you would notice if you rammed a pin threw someone’s skin no matter who worried you were about being discovered. By the end of the novel however she was whiny and I wanted her to become a vampire so she would at least be interesting again. The Mina portrayed in The League of Extraordinary Gentleman is so much better. Thank you creative license.
Dr. Van Helsing was annoying as all hell and I am very very VERY happy that in the movie Van Helsing he does not at all resemble Stoker's model. Though with Huge Jackman I really don't know how you can go wrong. *yum* Dr. Van Helsing in the book was sooooooo long winded and refused to tell anyone anything until something horrible happened. If he wouldn't have been so damn secretive maybe the book could have been 200 pages and not 300 hundred.
And then their is Quincy Morris who I didn't even know was a character in the Dracula book until I started to read it for myself. Let me just say that he is straight up shady. He is always disappearing and then reappearing with weak alibis and then he almost kills Jonathan shooting at a 'bat' at the window. Shady to say the least. Then he just kinda dies, no fan fair and not really a lot of drama or grief. He just dies.
I can not forget Renfield because he was the person I felt most sorry for and the saddest at his death. He was a lunatic who saw a way to get what he wanted, but at the last minute had a change of heart and died trying to protect Mina. Though I am not going to lie the whole spiders and flies was weird, but hey he was in a mental asylum.
Which leads me to my biggest problem with the novel. You know that Renfield loves Dracula and calls him master and you know that he needs to be invited into your home. So what do our brave heroes do? Leave the female home, alone and defenseless, and go out and about looking to Dracula which is only going to piss him off. Really this seemed like a good idea? I literally rolled my eyes at the book when this happened. And then it took them forever to figure out he was even feeding on Mina. Stupid males! Mina wasn't much better.
Overall I think that anyone interested in vampires or gothic novels should read this book because it is a good read. You do need to battle through some sections, but the staking of Lucy really is worth it. Also I had to read a lot of secondary literature about Dracula and now it's hard not to see everything as a sexual innuendo. Really you should read some of the stuff written about this book.
Also in the way of Dracula movies I recommend Dracula: Dead and Loving it if you are looking for a laugh. As a matter of fact I am going to go see if it is an instant watch :)
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