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This is the seventh (7th) installment of a book review series, based off of the books I was able to read within 2018.
Books discussed: Dracula by Bram Stoker & Frankerstein by Mary Shelley.
Let me say something about this book: It's a waste of time, and a waste of a very good concept.
I'm reading Frankenstein by Mary Shelley right now. That came out years before Dracula. And I think it's what started the whole Gothic Fiction genre in literature. The stories back then; how they were written is so different from how stories or authors are writing their novels nowadays. Back then, they used this sort of "letter-written" narrative, where the story unfolded through several letters the characters in the story gave each other to.
It's a very weird approach. I'm used to a more first person or omniscient narration, because that's usually how writers do their stories in modern times. So it's hard for I guess anybody, to try and read a story in such an old-fashioned way. The narration of both Frankenstein and Dracula are of course much more detailed and intricate than the modern stories of today. I guess the author who could still pull that off in modern day, is Stephen King. Otherwise, it was really just a weird era back then.
Going even further with Frankenstein and Dracula: I actually bought both of these two books for like less than 100 pesos each. It's the Collins Classic version of the books that I bought. To describe the look of the books: they were pocket book version of the classic tales.
The reason behind buying these books is because of this resentment I have for anything within the horror genre, especially when it comes to movies such as Paranormal Activity, or Annabelle, etc. I dunno. I just don't enjoy watching these movies for the sake of scaring the hell out of myself.
So to counter that, what I did was buy books that belonged to the horror genre. The Classic horror genre. And you could honestly learn from these two books, not just for how they are written, but why they were written at that time.
See, both of these fictional stories were strongly based on the things that were happening around the authors' environment.
Mary Shelley lived at a time when galvanism(electrifying corpses to make them move) was like the bleeding edge of scientific experimentation. She got so into the subject matter, she even dreamed of it, and that's how Frankenstein happened. Bram Stoker's era was post-Shelley, which meant that Gothic fiction was on the rise at that time. The famous Transylvania Castle is also real, and at the time, vampire folk lore were the talk of the community. Everybody was hearing rumors of a man living in that Castle, who was said to have lived longer than any man ever could. Stoker took these real life matters, and formulated a world in his story as a warped reflection of what was happening at his time.
Both novels served not only as classic tales, but also as a sort of historic documentation of each author's time, which brings value and a sense of purpose to these stories. They're not just written for the sake of writing. They're written for the sake of caution.
I didn't finish reading Dracula. I hated it, honestly. I like it for what it's trying to be (a cautionary tale), but I can't take the length of each dialogue Van Helsing always does in every chapter.
There isn't even that much Dracula in the story, either. It's he was there in the beginning, and then afterwards, it's just the other characters gossiping about his mischiefs.
Although, again, I like it for it's purpose. I'm even thinking of writing my own Gothic Fiction Novel some time in the near future. It would probably be about Philippine Folk Lore.
Rating System:
Story = 8
Writing Style = 4
Physical Synesthesia = 7
Time it took to finish = Haha = 3
Price = P99.00 = 9.5
Overall = 6.3 / 10
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