Dracula By Bram Stoker

Dracula

By Bram Stoker​

So here we are, the reason for the Fangsgiving season, the novel that gave rise to everything else we're reviewing this month. Dracula was published on the 26th of May 1897 by Archibald Constable and Company after a contentious couple of months where they whittled down Bram's original story (Dracula's completed official version weighs in at 418 pages so imagine what the first draft was like [Marx’s Kropotkin’s Beard]) but we covered a lot of that last week, so let's jump right into Bram's life. Abraham (Bram) Stoker was born November 8, 1847, in Dublin Ireland. The third of seven children (And they were protestants, not Catholics, which makes this even more surprising.), his father was a civil servant and his mother a charity worker and a writer. It was an open question whether or not Bram would survive his first decade afflicted by a mysterious illness that left him so weak that he wasn't able to even walk until he was seven (There are a few possible causes for this. His father may have been a civil servant, but food prices in Ireland in the 1840s were extremely high thanks to a famine that Jonathan Swift may have written a certain Modest Proposal about. As a result, it’s possible that his mom suffered malnutrition in gestation or picked up an infection which either caused a delay in gross motor development in Bram, or left him with a compromised immune system and thus bed-ridden in early life.{I’ve also had celiacs and asthma suggested, the thing is we simply don’t know.}). His earliest memories were of being carried everywhere and being told stories by his Mother, his favorites were horror stories and his Mother, having survived the 1832 epidemic of cholera in the town of Sligo that killed 1500 people in 6 weeks had plenty to tell him (King Cholera is no joke. Every last one of you needs to say a prayer of thanks to Saint John Snow, father of Epidemiology.). Bram did survive however and focused on strengthening himself so by the time he went to Trinity College in Dublin, in the year 1864, he was a celebrated athlete, winning awards for weight lifting and playing soccer and rugby. He was also known as a great debater, often defending poets like Whitman and getting involved in the literature scene of the college. He graduated with honors and a degree in mathematics in 1870. It was here that he became a huge fan of the American poet, Walt Whitman and through a series of letters established a friendship that would last until Whitman's death; with Whitman even leaving some of his work to Bram in his will (Awwwww! Also, it is worth noting that Walt Whitman was definitely gay, and this will be important later.). He then went into civil service like his father, working in Dublin Castle, but his passion was in theater and he became an unpaid local writer for the Dublin Evening Mail as a theater critic. He also wrote short stories, publishing “The Crystal Cup” in 1872 and in 1879 wrote a manual for his job The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland.

Bram's life took a dramatic turn when Henry Irving, the most famous actor in the British Isles at the time, asked Bram to be his personal manager and to manage London's Lyceum Theatre in 1878. This was a great thing for Bram for two reasons: first of all, he was a huge fan of Mr. Irving's work; second of all, there was Ms. Florence Anne Lemon Balcombe soon to be Stoker to be considered (Here we go!). This is a story in and of itself. So let's talk about Florence for a bit here. She was born July 17, 1858, in Cornwall to Lt. Col James Balcombe and Phillippa Anne Marshall. She was widely considered the most beautiful woman in Dublin if not Ireland, with Prime Minister Gladstone referring to her as “the beauty” and society magazines lauding her for her grace, wit, charm, and manners (I bet she was secretly yearning to break free of the fucking whalebone corset…). On top of all that when Stoker met her... She was dating Oscar Wilde. Yes, that Oscar Wilde. Oscar had told her he planned to propose but then ran off to Oxford and stopped writing to her (I mean… Look, Oscar Wild definitely played for both teams, and he didn’t have a monogamous bone in his body for any definition of bone possible. He was likely terrified of the prospect of marriage at that time.{Then he should have bloody well told her! Ghosting her after showering her with gifts and promises was damn cruel!} I certainly don’t disagree there. So many god damned manchildren.). This is where Bram showed up and in a whirlwind romance marriage proposed to her. To make this even worse? Oscar and Bram were buddies, Bram had gotten Oscar membership in Trinity's Philosophical Society when he was its President. So he bloody well knew how Oscar felt but then he also knew that Oscar was completely taking her for granted. This also meant Florence and Bram knew each other pretty well before the romance started. Faced with a choice between a guy who paid attention to her and had a paying job in London where she would have an inside track to society and a guy who was penniless and hadn't spoken to her in months... She married Bram in December of 1878. Oscar Wilde was completely melodramatic about it, demanding she return a gold cross with his name on it and sending her a set of anonymous flowers in a too little, too late gesture but eventually got over it and became a friend of the family…(Look, under those conditions, there’s a certain performative melodrama you have to do…{I was going to argue this but then I realized we were talking about Oscar “head drama llama” Wilde} Plus if he didn’t protest, people would be suspicious.) Until he got arrested for being gay. We'll get to that (Not yet! [Oh come on!]). If anything I'd say this is a lesson in not taking your girl/boy for granted and make sure you talk to the people in your life! Otherwise... They might find their own Bram Stoker.

Florence and Bram had a son, named Irving Noel Thornley Stoker, so the boy was named after his uncle (Thornley Stoker) and his dad's boss. Bram would act as Irving's manager for 27 years, writing as many as 50 letters a day for his boss while also writing a series of Gothic horror novels. This was a high time for him, he was part of London high society and met James Whistler and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Florence became noted for her charity work and as a hostess for society while her evening social events became well known for being attended by notable intellectuals and artists. Among them Bram's sister Matilda, who was a noted artist and would come and stay with the Stokers for long periods. She would also stay and keep Florence company on the times that Mr. Irving would take Bram off on travels (We’ll get to this later). Although there were many trips where Bram prevailed on Mr. Irving to let him bring Florence with him. This was where Bram got to visit the United States repeatedly and met Walt Whitman face to face (Excuse me as I cough significantly). In fact, it's been suggested that some of Dracula's appearance is modeled on an elder Whitman. Bram published his first work Snake Pass in 1890; now most of his books were first drafts that he didn't put a lot of time into once the story was complete. Dracula on the other hand, spent 7 years on, where he would research European folklore and stories about vampires. Although he claimed the original inspiration was a bad dream brought about by eating bad crab meat. Now at this time Vampire stories were creeping into the public notice, the first English vampire story was written in 1797, under the title of The Bride of Corinth, Carmilla, another vampire classic was written in 1871. A novel simply called The Vampyre had been released by John Polidori, who came up with it while staying with Lord Byron and the Shelly's one hot (for ambiguous definitions thereof) June night. In fact, it was the same night that Mary Shelly wrote Frankenstein. Bram seemed determined to create a novel grounded in real geography and in the modern-day however and for the most part, he succeeded.

Of course, it wasn't all good things. This period saw the end of Oscar and Bram's friendship, as it was discovered that Oscar was in a romantic relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas and was sentenced to two years of hard labor. This led to Bram publically demanding that all homosexual writers in England be punished (Because he had to, or suspicion would land on him, and just like they did with Wilde, I have a sneaky suspicion they would have proved it.). This is a bit strange as Walt Whitman was also widely suspected to be gay (He absolutely was.), in fact, Oscar Wilde insisted that Witman was and Edward Carpenter, an early socialist poet, and gay rights activist, would claim to have a sexual encounter with him (I believe him). For example, Leaves of Grass was often considered pornographic or obscene. Suspicion was often aimed at Whitman, but Stoker defended his poems and skill until his dying day. This has led to a lot of questions about Bram's conduct and the reasons for it. This was brought to a head in the book, The Man Who Wrote Dracula by Bram's grand nephew Daniel Farson. Mr. Farson would portray a loveless, sexless marriage with a frigid Florence who lived miserably in London while Bram bounced from gay affair to gay affair. He claimed that he gathered all of this from the Stoker family, all of whom denied ever discussing a thing with him (Which they would. Though it is possible that both stories are kinda right. This presumes that Florence was lonely, for instance. She can be rather happy and even fond of her bisexual husband while’s he’s off getting to know Walt Whitman if they have an… arrangement. Say, involving Bram’s possibly bisexual sister. You think I am writing fanfic here? It’s circumstantial, but Matilda was a Victorian woman who as far as I know very much voluntarily didn’t marry until her 40s, and then married a French diplomat in his 50s. And we already know that Bram was perfectly fine - at least - with all the gays, mandatory denouncement notwithstanding.{It’s certainly possible and there’s circumstantial evidence for it at the very least. Although I got to point out all his meetings with Whitman were in public so I doubt that Bram and Whitman specifically ever had a physical relationship. As for Farson...}). This is further complicated by Mr. Farson painting Irving Stoker as an unwanted and unloved child, which was widely rejected by people who knew the Stokers. In Mr. Farson's later book Never a Normal Man, it is revealed that his own relations with his parents were not great and he often felt neglected. Now I'm going to get back to this but I'm going to ask y'all to remember this as we'll get back to this point. Back on the literary front, Bram's work would never approach the height of Dracula again. Although his mummy story The Jewel of the Seven Stars is considered a good effort and his nonfiction Reminiscences of Henry Irving in 1906 was well received. Some of his later work like the Lair of the White Worm is noted as declining in quality, in fact, leading some people to suggest that the illness that killed him was longer than is publicly known. What we do know is that his health declined sharply in the first decade of the 1900s and by 1912 Bram Stoker had passed away. What killed him isn't really known. Some claim tertiary syphilis, others claim he was the victim of a series of strokes and there's also the claim that Stoker just died of exhaustion after 3 decades of burning the candle at both ends (Literally any of these things are reasonable. A dalliance with any gender 30 years prior can give you tertiary syphilis.{Sure but it’s just as likely that some untreated asthma from his childhood flaring up combined with a Pulmonary embolism or stroke could have done it. Hell, he could have had his immune system weakening due to age and the garbage environment he was living in on top of untreated asthma. I actually had a talk with some mutual acquaintances of ours and they said that it could literally be dozens of things or combinations of them. So I can’t put too much weight on syphilis, especially given that your average Victorian House was 30% poison by weight} That is certainly true. They had no safety standards at all, for anything.). What we do know from Bram's own writings is that Florence dropped everything in a frantic effort to nurse him back to health and Bram ordered that his body be cremated quickly after his death. Which was incredibly odd for the Victorian period.

Florence would outlive her husband for 25 years and defend the copyright to Dracula with all the power and swiftness of a rabid honey badger (Honey Badger don’t care! Honey Badger don’t give a shit!). While she was happy to grant the rights to produce plays based on the novel, provided she was asked and the estate got it's due and to publish any unearthed work she found (like Dracula's Guest) she did demand that nothing be produced without her permission. That created enemies, especially when she was willing to go to court and call the cops on people she knew were abusing Dracula's copyright. When the German film Nosferatu premiered and proved to be basically a bootleg version of Dracula, Florence went to bloody war to set an example. She not only bankrupted the filming company but demanded that every copy of the print be given over to her and she burnt them to send a message. This did not make her popular and she was often gossiped about in cruel terms, although she had many defenders. Which leads me to where I think the rumors of her being frigid or hateful come from, right here. Because these are the kinds of rumors men spread about a woman who defeats them (This, exactly.). Frankly, I wonder how many the rumors about the Stoker marriage come from this period as some folks bitter that they could have a free lunch started gossiping. In 1927 she did grant the rights for a series of plays and Universal studios would buy the film rights, which would lead to the classic 1931 Dracula starring Bela Lugosi. She would pass away in 1929 and have her body cremated and her ashes mixed with Bram's. The rest is history. Now, this is just the shallow end of the Stoker pool folks, sadly we aren't going to be able to discuss things like Bram Stoker's sister in law Emily who was committed and may have provided a model for Reinfield's general behavior in the book for lack of space. Just be aware that I've only scratched the surface of what was going on in the Stoker family during Bram's life and in the period shortly after his death. Now at long last let's turn to the novel.

Dracula is told in an epistolary format, which means it's presented in a series of documents. In the case of Dracula, it uses journal entries and letters as the main method but also has ship logs and newspaper articles to communicate events to the reader that the main characters would be unaware of. This is a format with a lot of strengths and weaknesses. It can allow you to insert knowledge that your main characters wouldn't know without tipping the antagonist's hand too much, it allows you to switch narrators pretty easily, as well as use this to show the same event from different viewpoints or use an unreliable narrator when needed. It also allows you to insert different ideas or world views into the story simply by switching characters. It can also be used to enforce realism by using outside sources like newspaper articles, radio broadcasts, or even recently blog posts to enforce what the main characters are saying. This is also done by having more than one character repeat the events since most readers will unconsciously assume that they all can't be lying. It can however rob your story of some dramatic tension as anyone writing about their experience clearly survived to do so and it creates additional work for the writer as you have to pay attention to the voice of each character. If you're not careful, each character starts to sound the same and readers will blur the characters together (While this is true, it is likely easier to use this format than to use First Person unlimited, because the documentary format lets your brain switch modes between characters.). It can also cause a sense of being somewhat removed from the plot as you're not “seeing” the events as you would in a 3rd person or 1st person narrative but are being “told” about them. This tends to reduce the dramatic weight of action and at times can make it difficult to add depth to the characters. Mr. Stoker can avoid this by having characters whose viewpoint we never see be major characters in the plot, as well as cutting off journal entries at strategic points and switching viewpoints at moments in the story to rack up the tension. For example, John Harker's journal entries cut off for a while when he decides to make an escape attempt from Castle Dracula and we instead jump over to Mina and Lucy back in England and are left wondering whatever became of poor old Harker? Actually, before I start throwing names at you, let's go over our characters. Now fair warning, I'm going to spoil the hell out of a book that is by my count about 123 years old so... I think you've had plenty of time to read it.

John Harker is actually the first viewpoint character of the story, which is mostly shared through his journal entries, as well as Mina and John Steward's and to a lesser extent Lucy and Van Helsing. He's a lad of no family but has managed to impress his employer Peter with his diligence, intelligence, and work ethic. John has recently become a full-fledged Solicitor, which in the United Kingdom is a type of lawyer. In the English legal system, they traditionally dealt with a wide range of legal matters but were required to get another kind of lawyer called a barrister to advocate in a high court (Think of the solicitor as the family lawyer, while the barrister is the hired gun.). At this point and time in the United Kingdom barristers didn't deal with the public directly, you hired a Solicitor who hired a barrister for you. Solicitors were also used as legal representatives by the wealthy and powerful for most of their business and legal concerns allowing them to avoid being seen engaged in the middle-class occupation of trade (Gotta love that class-stratification.). At the start of the book, John has actually just become a Solicitor and his job is to head off to Transylvania to complete a real estate deal with Count Dracula. That's right, poor John is just a real estate agent in the wrong place and time (Real Estate Lawyer, to be fair.). John is in a lot of ways the perfect Victorian gentleman: he's modest, polite, wants to do a good job, and avoids any overt display of gaudiness. John is very much the motivated hunter of the group, often pushing further than others will go due to his personal stake in the hunt. We see this as he's often the first to attack Dracula, often willing to engage the vampire head-on. He's also a bit of a racist as he disregards the various warnings of the locals not to go to Castle Dracula but not so racist that he refuses the crucifix that he's given although he grumbles to himself that he's giving in to idolatry. To be fair to him, he also fully admits that those locals knew what they were talking about and maybe he should listen the next time a quaint little peasant tells him that a place is dangerous (Which makes him better than most of the rest of his social strata at the time.). I tend to think his biggest character flaw is falling apart after a crisis has passed. Don't get me wrong, he's great in a dangerous situation, when imprisoned he operates with a clear head, recognizing his danger and making the decisions he needs to escape but as soon as he thinks he's safe he has a mental breakdown and forgets everything! We also see that he's a bit sexist but not as sexist as we should expect as he doesn't raise a fuss about his wife traveling alone or her being involved in his future vampire slaying activities up to her dainty elbows. (Well that’s progress for the Victorians!)

That wife would be Mina Murray Harker, Mina is an assistant schoolmistress who is head over heels in love with John. When he heads off to unknowingly stick his head into the undead lion's mouth, she heads out to visit her much wealthier friend Lucy because school is closed for the summer. Mina is the most organized of the group and capable of gathering together information from a lot of different sources and boiling it down to its actionable points (It’s almost like she’s a teacher or something.). In fact, out of all the group, she's the one who knows the full story as she's the one who reads everyone else's journals and letters. She was the one who made the decision to read John's journal of his time at Castle Dracula after hearing what happened to Lucy and realizing she had critical need-to-know information, got it to Van Helsing so he could operate with all the information he needed. She also performs a lot of emotional labor for the group (Because of course, she does.), as she's the one who comforts the men when they're mourning Lucy and is the person the men decide to protect at all costs. She's also the one who nurses John Harker back to health during his mental breakdown after he escapes Castle Dracula. Of course, they fail to protect her because they stop listening to her and it's interesting how in the novel their ability to fight Dracula goes downhill when they aren't listening to what she tells them (I feel like there is a lesson here.). She is also Dracula's second major victim that we know of in England. Now in the novel, there is no romance or personal reason for Dracula's attack, it's a purely tactical move on the vampire's part. Mina additionally doesn't show any sign of attraction or desire towards Dracula but is repelled and deeply upset at what Dracula has done to her. I'll talk about this more when I discuss the 1992 film, however. Mina's also the only one who seems in any way shape or form aware of operational security at times (Jesus she is surrounded by idiot manchildren). I mean granted the rest of the group doesn't run around London screaming at the top of their lungs what they're doing but Mina's the one who has to tell them that if they can use her to see into Dracula's mind, he can do that with her so they can't tell her anything. It's moments like this in the book that lead me to ask how the hell did Victorian gentlemen ever manage to run the world, even considering that they did a rather poor job of it (Because they used the blunt instrument of the army and piles of money.). Seriously if anything is holding back Mina here, it's the insistence of the men around her that she not use her gifts to the fullest. While she's given a lot more freedom and recognition than I expected, she's often relegated to sitting at home waiting for the menfolk which is what in the end made her an easy target (This is why we have Solidarity here on the left, people. Those who get left out get victimized and make you weaker. It is why the IWW was militantly anti-racist in its organizing waaay before it was cool.). Still, there are books written in 1960 that do a worse job so maybe I shouldn't be too harsh here.

Lucy Westenra is a minor viewpoint character and is Dracula's first known English victim, a bright, beautiful, and sweet lady who is proposed to by three men on the same day. She makes the difficult decision to marry the heir to a local lordship and become a lady instead of marrying a doctor who runs an insane asylum or a Texan adventurer (The men then all swear to be bros forever. It is remarkably mature of them.). Lucy draws Dracula's attention because she's sleepwalking and he's able to call her out of her home for the first attack and get her to open the way to him in the following nights. Lucy is frankly a sacrificial victim in this novel. She doesn't get a lot of time in the story and when we do get to see her viewpoint, it's mostly one where she is confused and deeply frightened of what is happening to her. Her characterization isn't deep but I'm not sure what can be done given that she spends most of her time in the book, you know... Dying (I mean…). Her suffering, death, and undead state however serve to bring in Helsing and united Seward, Arthur, and Quincey. Her friendship with Mina serves as a method to bring in the Harkers and hammer together this little band of crusaders. She is also the first vampire that Seward, Arthur, and Quincey see and serves as proof of Dracula's unnatural unlife and his dark powers.

Seward is the third and last major viewpoint character. A suitor of Lucy's who gets turned down, rather than be bitter about the whole thing, he, Arthur, and Quincey swear to be brothers and friends. This honestly is a great reaction and I liked it (Homosexuality aside, I feel like this reflects Stoker’s own experience with, you know… Oscar Wilde.). Seward is a doctor focused on treating various mental conditions (A really primitive psychiatrist. Holy Fuck were they primitive back then. Like, women with depression just needed to get their rocks off, and the doctor would help, kind of primitive. Here, have some more morphine, it’s good for you! {To be fair Seward tries to talk to his patients and reason them through their issues, which is better then repeatedly shocking them in a tub of cold water}) and his main focus is figuring out the problems of Renfield, a man who suffers under the delusion that if he eats something alive that he gets the creature's life force, adding to his vitality and span of years. While Dr. Seward labors under the primitive nature of Victorian healthcare, he at least attempts to maintain a non-hostile relationship with his patient trying to draw him out through talk therapy for the most part and reason him out of his delusion. Seward is very much in love with doing things the new way, for example, he doesn't write in a journal, he records his own voice by the phonograph, forgetting that without labeling the recordings he has no way of knowing what information is kept in which (Oh dear…). What's interesting is that he is very much a man of science and is a skeptic of the supernatural but is the first to be convinced by the evidence that Van Helsing has to show him (Well yeah, I mean, if you show me evidence of vampires that is compelling, I will alter my worldview accordingly without missing a beat. I will then become ComradeTortoise, the Communist Vampire Slayer: Blood-sucking isn’t just for capitalists anymore.). He serves as both the medic of the group and as Van Helsing's apprentice, absorbing the lore and lessons. We learn these right alongside him, so in a lot of ways, he's our gateway to the world of vampire hunting. Arthur and Quincey are very much supporting characters. We don't get their viewpoints in the story, their roles are both to provide brute force and resources to the group. Although Arthur is given depth by his grief for Lucy and the fact that he's dealing with losing his bride and his father all in the same week (Yeeesh). He's also able to provide the most authority in the group via his noble title but honestly seems careful not to abuse it. Quincey on the flip side is the world-wise adventurer, brave to a fault to the point of being right beside John Harker when it's time to charge the immortal blood-drinking demon with the strength of 20 men armed with nothing but knives. He's rasher than Seward or Arthur, more prone to give promises, although I'll point out in the book, Quincey keeps every promise he makes. No matter what the personal cost to himself.

Abraham Van Helsing is the voice of experience and the commander of this unit. Originally brought over to treat Lucy's mysterious blood loss, he arranges the transfusions that keep her alive long enough for him to realize he's in a duel with a creature of the night. It's Helsing who initiates Dr. Seward and the others into the grim world of hunting monsters. It's him who upon realizing that the Harkers already have experience and with the same vampire that they're hunting, brings them all together for one purpose. Helsing is here to kill Dracula or die trying. His past is mysterious, we know from his comments that he is married but his wife is lost to him, most likely from mental illness (possibly caused by some past brush with the monstrous?) and he is well known for his study in obscure diseases and topics arcane and on the very edge of science (Something creepy probably did drive his wife insane. Kinda has to be personal to go from doctor to monster hunter.). A lot of the book plays out as a series of moves and counter moves between Helsing and Dracula as Dracula attempts to outmaneuver Helsing and Helsing tries to pin down the bloodsucker and kill him. Van Helsing is given a very idiosyncratic voice partly due to being Dutch in a crew of English folks and the fact that he often seems near-insane himself (I mean…). So his grammar and word choices are very individualistic compared to the other characters and can take some time to puzzle out. In the book, we see him have several bouts of what I can only call hysterics either through near mad laughter or weeping. He only really does this in front of Dr. Seward. This leads to an interesting split as John and Mina see Van Helsing as an all-wise and resolute commander but Dr. Seward is often left asking just how damaged his mentor and father figure is and just what is it in the past that led to this? (He breaks down in front of his psychiatrist student as a cry for help, but unfortunately, all he can expect is a hug and tincture of laudanum. Even Dr. Seward knows that Cocaine would likely be counter-productive. {Dr. Van Helsing on Cocaine would be terrifying, suddenly Dracula isn’t the apex predator of London anymore!}) I think Mr. Stoker was trying to hint at the idea that Van Helsing had hunted and slain other monsters in the past and was not left unscathed by these events. I do find it interesting that while the threat in Dracula is foreign, so is salvation. Because it's Van Helsing who brings the group the information and skills they need to win and he does so from beyond the green shores of England.

Dracula himself is a huge presence in the novel, which you would hope so, the book being named after him and all. However, we never get any chapters in his viewpoint and his goals and desires can only be inferred by his actions. The book does make it clear through his actions that Dracula is a proficient planner and tactical operator (He’s an immortal. Van Helsing is not his first vampire hunter.). He doesn't set up one lair in England, he sets up almost a dozen. He doesn't just disappear John Harker, he sets it up to look like he starts on his way home but disappears on the way back removing himself from suspicion. He kills Lucy and turns her to both create a minion and a distraction from his own actions. In fact, we get so focused on vampire Lucy's actions that we have no idea if Dracula killed anyone else in England. When the group begins attacking him in an organized way, he strikes directly at Mina. This both demoralizes the group and robs them of one of their most intelligent members. Worse, since it takes them several days to even realize he's doing it, Dracula can use Mina as an intelligence conduit right into his enemies' inner counsels and no one the wiser! Again the book has me questioning how the hell did Victorian Gentlemen ever manage to run the world? (Just be glad Dracula isn’t Russian. He’d be playing maskirovka games with them.) When he no longer has a secure base of operations in enemy territory he escapes and heads back to his homeland to rebuild his forces for another attempt. Even though he only engages John Harker in conversation in the book, he manages to have a dramatic and at times brutal impact on every character in the novel. I am left thinking that there was some greater purpose for Dracula coming to London, if all he wanted was a larger and wealthier hunting ground, after all, he could have gone to cities in Germany, Sweden, or Italy (Or even just… Budapest or Bucharest). Instead, he went to the one place that could be argued was the capital of the world and certainly the capital of the greatest power in western civilization at the time. So I am left wondering... What was Dracula's ultimate purpose?

Dracula does a great job of creating a memorable plot with a rising sense of danger and horror throughout the book. The book uses the epistolary format to full effect and is still able to give us some rather well-done action scenes. There are however weaknesses, first, off I think modern readers would find the language a little silted and the characters strange and a bit unconvincing. This is an effect of the past being a foreign country in some ways. Simply put the people of 1897 don't think, speak, or act like us and if you're not prepared for that it might damage your suspension of disbelief. The characterization isn't awful, each character has a clear distinct character with different flaws and virtues but it is rather thin. The most complex characters are Van Helsing and John Harker. Mina, while a good character isn't that complex, she's smart, a devoted wife, and an all-around good person. Quincey is brave, loyal and rash, reckless, and so on and so forth. Dracula, our villain, is slain at the end and left an utter mystery to the reader. Which I think is part of the appeal and what carried the character forward. Because we only see him as others see him and have no idea what he was really intending it is easy for the reader to project what they want to see into Dracula. Also while I don't get the erotic appeal that is often brought up, I do get Dracula to a lesser extent. He's a figure of power and authority but is utterly unbound by social rules or restrictions. Able to move through society but not in any way beholden or controlled by it. He can simply take what he wants, without regard for any law or morals. There's an attraction there that I can understand and I think anyone can really. This is only enhanced by Mr. Stroker's actions to ground Dracula in a real-time and place while giving him the immortality to transcend that time and place making him feel real, but leaving him a possible threat to you, no matter when and where you're reading this. I honestly think it's the character of Dracula that gives this novel its legs. Not that the heroes are awful but most of them could easily be replaced (and have been in a number of adaptations) and you don't really lose anything but you need Dracula. I'm giving Dracula by Bram Stoker a B. The weaknesses remain but the story remains compelling and worth the read and deserves its longevity.

So this is a super long review and I want to say thanks for sticking with us all the way. Fangsgiving was a decision made by our ever-wise patrons to explore Dracula over a month of reviews. If you'd like to have a voice in future discussions on future reviews and theme months, join us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads  Join us Sunday for a bonus review of the 1992 Dracula film by Francis Ford Coppola. Monday we will have a guest review by Mr. Davis on the first 3 games of the Castlevania video game series. Until then, stay safe and as always Keep Reading!

Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen
Normal text is your reviewer Garvin Anders 

Dracul By Dacre Stoker and J.D. Barker

 Dracul

By Dacre Stoker and J.D. Barker

So Dacre Stoker is Bram Stoker's great-grandnephew, because of this and the exhaustive research he did before putting pen to paper, the Stoker estate has granted Dacre's books official status. That's right, this book is officially part of the canon, the expanded Dracula universe if you will (Oh God.). Now Interesting enough Dacre did not grow up a horror fan or steeped in family lore. In fact, Dacre, a Canadian American born in 1958, only found out he was related to Bram because the other children kept making jokes about getting blood instead of candy from his home during Halloween. This is because it was a family policy that while they were proud of Bram Stoker's accomplishment, they didn't want to feel beholden to it and family members should make their own way. Dacre certainly did so, becoming a member of the Canadian men's pentathlon team and coaching the team at the 1988 Summer Olympics. It wasn't until a meeting with screenwriter Ian Holt that Dacre felt the urge to start writing in his great granduncle's sandbox, this led to the authorized sequel of Dracula the Un-dead in 2009. However, Dacre found things that made him believe there was more work to be done. JD Barker on the other hand is an internationally bestselling American author of suspense thrillers. He was born on January 7, 1971, in Lombard Illinois. He got his start as a ghostwriter and book doctor helping other authors get their works squared away for publication. In 2014 he released his first novel, Forsaken, which utilized the character of Leland Gaunt of Stephen King's Needful Things. Mr. Barker had managed to get Mr. King's permission for this and had honestly done a good job. He did such a good job that Forsaken won one of the Bram Stoker Awards, in this case, Superior Achievement in a First Novel. Which led to the Stoker family reaching out to him to help with a more ambitious project then even a sequel to Dracula.

The story of the creation of the Dracula novel is one surrounded by rumor and swirling half-myths. Dracul finds it's starting point in the fact that in the first draft that Bram Stoker submitted, the opening line is a four-word sentence “This story is true.” The first draft was so upsetting that the publisher's response was a single word. No (I should think so, in Victorian England!). They believed that publishing the first draft of Dracula, especially presenting it as a true story would only cause panic and upset. London at the time was still reeling from the Whitechapel murders and the last thing the editors wanted to suggest to the good people of England who already were in the grip of terror of Jack the Ripper was there was a second supernatural monster roaming about after their blood (That’s a bit odd honestly.  Yes, Jack The Ripper was ascribed supernatural powers by a few, but most believed him a garden variety mortal.  Penny Dreadfuls were very common in those days, and people were accustomed to… badly written pulp horror.  Honestly, this stinks to me of disdain for the good sense of the working class. {Well it was Victorian England}). For months Stoker and the Editors dueled and many changes were made, the title originally to be “The Un-Dead” was changed to Dracula and strangely enough the first 102 pages were supposedly cut from the novel entirely (Huh..). This was confirmed when a manuscript of an early draft was found and the page number 103 was crossed out and the number 1 put in its place. It’s believed that a small part of those missing pages was reworked into the short story Dracula's Guest published by Bram's widow Florence in 1914 but the rest seemed lost to history. Mr. Stoker and Mr. Baker working from notes, journals, and letters by Bram and others attempted to reconstruct those missing pages and build a new story from them. It's also noted that they borrowed a bit from a book that we'll be reviewing later, Powers of Darkness, which claims to be based on an earlier draft of Dracula itself. One that in a lot of ways challenges the conventional wisdom of the novel; for example rejecting completely that Dracula is based on Vlad Tepes. Although Dracul does suggest that the vampire comes from the same family line as Vlad Tepes, instead suggesting that the vampire is older than the historical Vlad and comes by his powers through darker dealings. The book also steps back into earlier vampiric lore, instead of sunlight destroying them for example, they are simply rendered powerless and can be overpowered by mortal men (Yeah the sunlight destruction thing is relatively new.). To be honest, I like this idea as it provides more dramatic opportunities for the vampire and the heroes to meet face to face without having to explain how the vampire fails to just overwhelm everyone. Other weaknesses stay, however, such as the inability to cross running water, the intense reaction to garlic, and the lack of a reflection in the mirror. Dracul was published in 2018 and remains Mr. Stoker's most recent book.

Dracul also avoids the main characters of the novel Dracula, although one of them does make an appearance towards the end of the book. Instead, Dracul uses real people, most specifically Bram Stoker himself and his family. The narrative builds on real events that happened to the Stoker family, for example, Bram was afflicted with an unknown illness as a child and often left him unable to walk until he was 7 years old; by the time he was 20 however, Stoker would be a celebrated athlete. However later in life, Stoker faced a sudden decline which has been explained as a series of strokes or tertiary syphilis (The gift that keeps on giving.). It's Bram's childhood illness that is the inciting incident of this novel, however, as his condition worsens and only his nanny Ellen Crone seems capable of treating it. However, every time she embarks on the treatment she must flee the family home for days. Bram finds himself being pulled into a mystery to discover just who this woman is and what is her role in his recovery and continued good health. Strangely enough, after his good health is seemingly restored Ellen disappears, at first it seems for good but nothing lasts forever. However, Bram is not the motivating character in this investigation, instead, he is pushed and pulled into it by his much bolder and inquisitive sister Matilda Stoker. Where Bram is a good storyteller and writer, Matilda is a talented artist even in her childhood; and she’s deeply frustrated by her inability to draw, paint, or otherwise capture Ellen Crone's likeness on paper (Ooooh okay, that is pretty cool.). Each work comes out as a fairly similar but obviously different woman no matter what Matilda does. This drives her to start digging into just who Ellen is and when she sees Ellen in Paris years after Ellen's disappearance it sets Matilda on the scent of the mystery again. This means that she will pull in her dear brother Bram whether he likes it or not. It's Matilda's desire to know what the hell is going on that starts the plot but it's Bram's complicated and interdependent relationship with Ellen that keeps the plot going. Nor are Bram and Matilda the only two of the Stoker family pulled into this, as their elder brother Thornley is also pulled into it almost against his will, due to the affliction plaguing his wife Emily (God it’s like Ellen is some kind of vampiric Rasputin…). The Stokers find themselves asking, just what is going on here, how much of it is related and how over their heads are they? They'll have to recruit allies of their own such as the Hungarian adventurer Arminius Vambery, who has a wealth of knowledge and experience that he keeps hidden. This ends up begging the question of whether they can trust Vambery any more than they can trust the creatures of darkness that are hounding them?

Mr. Stoker and Mr. Barker choose to tell their tale through journal entries and letters written in the first person (Interesting choice. A bold move, if you will.  That kind of structure is hard to pull off so if the author manages it, fantastic! {I should note that the original Dracula novel uses that same format to great effect}). They also ramp up the suspense by framing the childhood investigations between scenes of Bram Stoker being besieged by unknown dark forces both from without a desolate tower and within a locked room inside the tower (“You might be wondering how I got here…” This would lend itself to a fourth wall breaking TV adaptation.). So even as you ask, who is Ellen Crone, what is her interest in the Stoker family, and how is she affecting Bram's health? You're asking, what is Bram doing in that tower, what is he trying to keep in the tower and what is he trying to keep out? The story moves to deal with the Stokers as adults, coming to realize that their brush with the occult and unseen powers of the world in their childhood was not a one-time event but a prelude to a grim struggle against something dark, powerful, vast, and filled with hate and contempt for them (“But we didn’t do anything to them!  We were eight!”). They don't know the players, they don't know the rules of this game, but they already know that losing will cost them more than their lives, it could end up costing them their very souls. Mr. Stoker and Mr. Barker do a great job keeping the vampires mysterious and dangerous while giving them an allure and showing the kind of strange relationships that can evolve between an undead creature with a mind of its own and a human being. The first half of the book is a slow burn that unspools a series of mysteries, where the answers only leave bigger and darker questions behind. This is done fantastically and you're left with a feeling of satisfaction and interests as the mystery is slowly revealed in all its glory. The second half of the book is a lot more frenetic in its pace as the characters hurtle towards their final confrontation with their enemies.

This leads to the two complaints I have with the book. The biggest one being the relationship between our title character and antagonist, and Ellen Crone. It's the shallowest relationship in the book and that's a problem for me because that relationship is what is driving Dracul's actions in the book! I also feel like it makes our title villain rather petty and shallow and honestly, I hate that (Could just be the framing, you know.  Unless you get the antagonist’s perspective in a journal entry, the viewpoint characters might not actually know what’s going on, so you get an unreliable narrator thing going on.{Fair point but I gotta go off what I see in the text!}). There's room for petty and shallow villains, I just don't think Prince Dracula, lord of the night and king of vampires should be one of those! It also stands out because Ellen's relationship with almost every other character in this story is multifaceted and rather deep. I'm purposefully avoiding details to avoid spoiling the book for you but I was left feeling that Dracula had been diminished by this. The second complaint is that the frenetic pace of the second half while allowing for several great action scenes and confrontations means that we don't get to spend too much time with the title character! Perhaps this is because this is envisioned as a prelude that works in tandem with Dracula the novel but if you're reading this on its own then it's a bit maddening. Because at the end of the book, I'm not sure what Dracula was really expecting to get out of his plan other than hurting people who hadn't done anything to him. Maybe that's enough motivation but for me, it falls flat. This could be a personal flaw though folks so I'm not going to dwell on it too much.

On the balance, though I really enjoyed what I read here, the novel works well to support the events in Dracula without undercutting them or the characters of that story. This is a good story, with a villain whose motivations just don't make sense for me as a person but that doesn't make it unrealistic or bad. So keep that in mind when you see my grade. This can be a difficult balancing act to pull off especially writing an addition to the story 120 years after its publication. Meanwhile, it provides us with another look into the world of nighttime predators that stalk humanity's imagination. I usually have mixed feelings about dragooning historical figures into what is essentially a fantasy novel, if only because of the sheer violence that is usually done to the historical person's character. Here however Mr. Stoker and Mr. Baker showed a great deal of care and understanding even while taking what I hope are some liberties with their life events. Still, it makes you wonder about those first 4 words, doesn't it? Dracul by Dacre Stoker and J.D. Barker gets a B+ from me. Go ahead and give it a look, I think you'll enjoy it.

So this book was voted for by our ever-wise patrons, whose ranks you can join for as little as a dollar a month.  That dollar gets you a chance to vote on upcoming book reviews, discuss theme months and vote for them.  Higher levels get other bonuses but to see those you can visit  https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads Hope to see ya there.  Next week!  We get to the main event!  The novel that started it all, Dracula by Bram Stoker, be there or be tossed into a pit with the hungry wolves!  Additionally a review of the 1992 Dracula film!  A special guest review!  Until then folks, keep your garlic up, your stakes sharp and as always, Keep Reading! 

Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen 

White text is your reviewer Garvin Anders

Dracula, Prince of Many Faces: His Life and His Times By Radu Flrescu and Raymond T Mcnally

Dracula, Prince of Many Faces: His Life and His Times

By Radu Flrescu and Raymond T Mcnally

Dr. Raymond Mcnally was born on April 15, 1931, in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. He graduated from Fordham University and earned a doctorate in Russian and East European history from the Free University of Berlin on a Fullbright Scholarship. He then joined the faculty of Boston College, where he came to specialize in teaching horror, especially in linking horror fiction to real life and history (Which is really cool, incidentally. Often the tropes of horror are reflections of the society that creates it. One can make the case that Slasher films are basically Reaganite morality plays.). He was known for wearing black capes and being one of the first western scholars to really push the idea that Count Dracula was based on a real person. He passed away from cancer in 2002. His co-author Radu Flrescu was born on October 23, 1925, in Bucharest, Romania, he fled to London when his father, a pro-Allied diplomat aristocrat defied the Fascist state's recall order and resigned his post in protest over Romania's alliance with Nazi Germany (Good for him! No mercy for fascists or their collaborators! Don’t be a collaborator! Be like Ambassador Flrescu). Radu came to the US to earn his doctorate and stayed, often serving as a bridge between his home in the United States, and his ancestral land of Romania. Among other things, he set up scholarships for gifted Romanian teenagers to study in the Boston area during summer months that continue to this day. He passed away in 2014. Dracula, Prince of Many Faces is actually their third work on this subject and was published in 1989, by the Hachette book group, a US trade publisher, and a division of the third-largest trade and educational book publisher in the world Hachette Livre, which is based in France.

We kick off Fangsgiving by first looking at the actual man who sired the myth. Vlad III, also called Vlad Tepes or Vlad the Impaler, a member of the royal dynasty of the princedom of Wallachia but who was Vlad beyond that dry recitation of fact? He's mainly remembered for displays of (horrifying) brutality (You don’t get called The Impaler by collecting bottlecaps.) but was that it? Was Vlad the Impaler just another savage warlord riding a wave of gore and blood as high as he could before crashing down onto the unyielding cliffs of history? Just what was it that he did, what was he trying to do, why was he trying to do it, and who for? What motivated this man and was he motivated to heights of bloody-handed unfriendliness beyond belief as legend says? That's what this book tries to answer. These are, as I imagine my readers realize, really big and hard questions to answer. It doesn't help that Vlad left us nothing written in his own hand and the written sources from people close to him are nonexistent. We don't even know the full details of his family life or the inner workings of his court. So what we're left with is a mix of third-hand reports, impressions of allies and enemies, and a mountain of Romanian Folklore (And it is a mountainous country, so…). That said, there is a massive amount of third party reports and it seems that everyone alive in the Balkans at the time had some kind of impression of this Prince of what was usually a minor state on the border between the expanding Ottoman Empire and fragmenting edges of the Christian European world. Part of this is the context that Vlad operated in, a world where proto-nationalist (Probably more appropriate to call them proto-national,) feelings were beginning to bubble in many places but nationalism itself hadn't been formulated. Italy and Germany for example were divided into competing princedoms and petty kingdoms. The Kings of France were brawling with the Royal Dukes of Burgundy, England was in the grips of the War of Roses, and out east things were even worse. Meanwhile, imperialist feudal empires like the Holy Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire, and to a lesser extent, Hungary were on the rise. While the book itself makes a lot of the conflict of Western Christianity and Eastern Islam the facts on the ground were vastly more muddled. Middle Eastern Muslim powers were happy to make common cause with European Christians if it would weaken the Turks and prevent their own conquests, while various Christian rulers and sects would ally with the Ottomans against one another or for momentary advantage in internal intrigues. (Let’s be honest, the whole damned continent was a munted shitshow. {I struggle to think of a continent that wasn’t at the time})

That's not to say that there wasn't an idea of unified Christian action against the widely seen foreign powers of the Ottoman, the Popes for example would constantly call for it (It being a crusade) and be ignored for the most part. Well not completely, Vlad's father, also called Vlad would fight so hard that he would be granted a Knighthood in the order of the Dragon, giving him the name of Vlad Dracul, which was a word for Dragon at the time (In Romanian). Dracula actually means son of the dragon. Vlad Dracul would try to balance his desire to fight in a unified Christian force with holding power in his nation which meant some level of accommodation with the Ottomans since that was preferred by the native noble class the Boyars. The Boyars, as they called themselves, feared the loss of their wealth and privileges more than they feared the loss of political independence (Aaaah nobility…). There were also colonies of German ruled cities invited by various rulers because the Germans of the time were considered great craftsmen and merchants so they were allowed to make self-ruling settlements across central and eastern Europe. Because of this and the blunt fact that Wallachia is a small nation trapped between growing empires, the Prince was forced to thread a needle of playing Hungarians off of Turks, off of native aristocrats, off of German colonists. Eventually Vlad Dracul... Misstepped.

Vlad Tepes was a victim of such a misstep, he and his brother Radu the Handsome ended up hostages to the Ottoman Empire. While they were treated like princes, they were still hostages and Vlad was often in trouble for striking out at his captors (Keep in mind as well that being a prince in the Ottoman Empire was rather lethal generally.{generally being a low-level merchant was the safest thing to be in the Ottoman Empire. Dear readers if you find yourselves there, sell tea and cotton and stay the hell out of politics}). Meanwhile, his father ended up leading a small army attacking the Ottoman Empire, which basically daring the Ottomans to kill his son (Not a man full of Positive Dad Affirmations, that one.{He would write letters to other Christian rulers demanding more troops and wailing about how he had given up two sons to fight for Christianity so clearly you could cough up some damn spearmen}). Vlad was 11 years old when he was taken by the Ottomans so he would have been in his early teens at best when he found out that his own father was willing to risk his life as a political move. Meanwhile, he's getting whipped for talking back to his tutors or giving an Ottoman Prince too much of a dirty look. He also saw other boy hostages murdered for their father's actions or blinded, or otherwise mutilated. Vlad does manage to get out of this cage but only after his Father and Eldest Brother have been murdered by German merchants is he released and only if he agrees to lead a part of the Ottoman Army. His Eldest Brother by the way is murdered by being buried alive (Oof. That is not a fun way to go. Welcome to the late medieval period everyone!). This doesn't excuse Vlad's actions but it certainly suggests that this kind of brutality was all he really knew when it came to politics (This is Eastern Europe. It’s all anyone knew. Hell the western Europeans were not that much better.{my argument is even by his time and place’s standards he had a brutal early life}). I mean this is the kind of story that laughs at stuff like Game of Thrones and calls it cute.

Vlad would rule his nation three times and never for very long, his reigns ended almost every time with the native Boygar class allying with foreign invaders. Including defecting from him to choosing Radu the Handsome who was openly promising to submit to the Ottomans (No wonder he was brutal. Jesus. Traitorous nobles everywhere! This is why you kill them all and institute a worker-s.. I mean...). In what marks the book as a product of its time, Radu is reported as possibly being in a sexual relationship with Sultan Mehmed but it's used as a slur against him. I'm going to let my editor discuss why that's bad as I think he would do a better job than I would (This is the problem with Gays in History. Our contributions to history are erased on the one hand, or used as a slur on the other by the very historians doing the work! Like, how many of you know that James Buchanan was gay? Like, there is no doubt about it, we have his letters, and everyone at the time knew he was basically married to William Rufus King. Or perhaps that the German guy who trained the continental army during the American revolution - Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben - was openly gay and got kicked out of Europe for it? The list is very expansive, but the historians are just like “Oh my, we can never know for sure…” or “James Buchanan was a lifelong bachelor.”. On the other side, we get cases like this, where it isn’t just their contemporary enemies that use homosexuality as a slur or insult, but the historians themselves. Erased or demonized, it’s our lot in academic history evidently.) Each time Vlad did come to power, he pursued the same program, that of a creation of a centralized strong state with a mass army and leadership based on a free peasant class (Woooo! I know it was basically a man-at-arms junta, but down with the Aristocrats! {This was more of a dictatorship}). Now he did this by engaging in a rule of terror, he founded villages, gave land for farms (Land Reform! {he has given you land comrades, so if he finds you lazy, he will boil you alive}), and founded monasteries but he also murdered savagely anyone he suspected of crimes or even laziness. He built a real-life Castle Dracula but used enslaved Boygars and their families to do it. He strengthened the education system by setting up orders of Orthodox monks but did it by burning out Catholic churches which he considered to be Hungarian beachheads in his realm and he also conducted a brutal policy of stripping away the economic rights and monopolies of the German colonies... By sacking the cities when they gave him lip or the least resistance (That was pretty standard at the time, to be fair.{He sacked a town over a letter of protest!} Pretty standard at the time!). A good pop culture comparison would be Dr. Doom, fully intent on modernizing and strengthening his nation, no matter how many of his countrymen he has to put into the ground to do it. When the Ottomans decided they had enough of him, he responded by invading Ottoman held Bulgaria and burning every possible staging area possible. When the Ottoman army shows up, they have to carry all their own supplies, slowing them down even more, as Vlad constantly attacks any isolated part of the army he can get to. When forced to retreat, Vlad scorches the earth to a level that will not be seen until it's practiced by the Russians (All glory to the Soviet Union! Evacuate everything of value that you can and burn the rest! Yes, that means moving entire factories! [I kid, though sometimes such tactics are necessary.]{Vlad did so badly that there was a strip of his country without food or unpoisoned water sources that would take 6 days to cross} Okay that is a bit much.). Vlad actually thwarts the invasion not through military strength but by fear, according to the stories. First by engaging a massive night attack that almost kills Mehmed and mauls the Janissary corps and then when the Ottomans approach his capital they find what is described as an entire forest of Turkish soldiers set on stakes. At this point, the invading army decides... “Fuck Wallachia, I want to go home and hide under my blankie.” This wasn't enough to keep him in power as the Boygars threw him out soon after but I’ve got to admit it's something that grips my imagination and goes a long way to explaining how Vlad would not just carve a position in history but end up with no less than five feuding traditions about him even after the Ottomans finally killed him. Or that's what the Ottomans kept telling themselves. Now I'm not even close to covering everything here but it should give you a sense of just what we're dealing with.

Vlad only lived forty-six years but was immortalized in five strains of tradition, the first and simplest being the Turkish one, where he was a complete and utter villain, a traitor, and a schemer. The German one was born from a combination of German merchants who never forgave Vlad his outrages or attempts to constrain their economic dominance and painted him as an utterly deranged psychopath who derived perverted joy from blood and death. This one persisted for centuries. The Hungarian one is more complicated, setting him up as an attack dog that simply slipped his leash one too many times and got put down. What I really found interesting was the Russian one; while the Russians didn't have any interaction with Vlad or the Balkans at the time, they heard quite a bit about it. Their reaction was that Vlad was the perfect model of a prince for an emerging nation surrounded by enemies, arguing that while Vlad was cruel and savage, such things are necessary to pull the nation together and fend off its enemies in its infancy (I mean, the Russians would think that, and they practiced what they preached… Honestly, it’s probably why the USSR turned into a bloodbath.). You can see the profound effect perhaps on Ivan the Terrible, who grew up having Vlad held up as a role model. The Romanian narrative would evolve completely from the peasants, who came to see the Boygars as collaborators with foreign enemies (Which they were.), was that Vlad was a Big Damn Hero and a founding father of Romania. As you can see... History is complicated and I can see how everyone got to where they are. I can't say what my own position on Vlad is, except to hope I'm never in a position where my nation needs such a leader. Which for anyone about to speak up, we don't. Lastly, there's Bram Stoker's Dracula which I think owes a lot more to the German position, fused with elements of Romanian folklore about vampires (And contemporary Victorian fears and cultural taboos.). Ironically there doesn't seem to be a vampiric tradition around Vlad specifically until our Anglo author stumbles into these stories and though fusing them together would be neat. Now to be fair there was a vampire tradition pre-existing in England but Bram grabbed a lot of Romanian elements and the book discusses that in some detail as well.

As a sourcebook, it's pretty good, the authors are devoted to giving you a full look at the world Vlad came from and operated in, reaching back to his grandfather's time to give you a full grounding and being willing to be upfront where source materials are sparse on the ground. So it certainly attempts to answer the questions I posed earlier. On the other hand, it does show it's age in that it gets a little too invested in the East vs West narrative and how it treats possible same-sex relations (Eeeeeh. Yeeaaaah. Though this was the framing for all of these things at the time of writing.). Which are serious failings and means in my mind at least you shouldn't hand this off to new impressionable students but only people who've learned enough to engage the text despite its failings and recognize what those failings are. Because of that, I'm giving Dracula, Prince of Many Faces: His Life and His Times by Radu Flrescu and Raymond T Mcnally gets a B-

I hope you enjoyed our first installment of Fangsgiving, a month where we look at Dracula, the prime example of fictional vampires. Our ever-wise patrons got to vote on whether or not to have this month in the first place, as well as voted on what books we would look at, as there's a lot of Dracula literature out there. You can join us for as little as a dollar a month! Just come over to https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads and pledge. The vote for November is going up this weekend! Next week our ever-wise patrons have chosen the official prequel to Dracula, Dracul by Dacre Stoker (Bram's great nephew) and J.D. Barker. Until then, stay safe and keep reading!

Breach of Faith book II By Daniel Gibbs and Gary Stevens

 Breach of Faith book II

By Daniel Gibbs and Gary Stevens

Breach of Faith is the sequel to Breach of Peace that we reviewed last month. So the only thing I'm going to repeat here is the Dread Disclaimer. As I've mentioned before, both your editor and I have known Mr. Stevens for years, although I've never met him face to face. I've been giving him praise and grief over his work for years. In fact, Mr. Stevens was kind enough to send me these books and was the one to tell me about Mr. Gibbs' work. I'm honestly pleased to see him publishing works but I hope to see him writing in his own worlds soon, as his imagination deserves its own space in the written world (Seriously.  His imagination is endless, and I have never seen anyone else with his creative drive.). Come on Stevens. You know you can. That said, everything you are about to read is my honest opinion but I feel I would be doing my readers a disservice if I wasn't upfront. If you'd like to know more about Mr. Stevens, I encourage you to read my Breach of Peace review and perhaps even read the book. That said, let's catch everyone up on the setting and the plot right? Warning there will be spoilers for the first book here.

The Breach series as I'm going to call it takes place within the wider universe of the Fight the Good Fight universe by Daniel Gibbs (I've reviewed the first book of that series). The series takes place far in the future, Earth has been unified under a single government but unfortunately, it's a tyrannical single-party state, called the League of Sol, preaching an extremist (by the standards of such things as Juche {League of Sol, when the North Koreans ask if maybe you should calm down...}) brand of socialism alongside a deep hatred of individuals and anything that smacks of individualism. Demanding that instead, people abandon any other identity than servants of Society, the idea of an overarching whole that united everyone into a single machine-like society. Strangely this idea was not universally popular and entire populations fled Earth into the stars thanks to the work of a genius, who also didn't want to live under a single-party state that was determined to dictate their every move. The dissenters fled far from Earth and settled the worlds of the Sagittarius arm of the galaxy. The largest group formed the Coalition of Terra, mostly made up of people who were religious and believed in individual rights, democracy, capitalism, and apple pie. This group from what I can tell was dominated by Americans, Israelis, Commonwealth nations, and several Arabic states. Strangely, the Coalition idea of governmental and economic organization was less than universally popular (Plus, not everyone likes apple pie.  I am more of a strawberry rhubarb man myself.{You… Wait is that a real pie?  Man, I want to try that now.[It is so good]}) and some populations split off to settle their own worlds, with blackjack and hookers! (And less authoritarian forms of socialism.) These worlds would have a... Complicated history with the Coalition, as most of them, were single star system states against the multi-system state of the Coalition but if nothing else the Coalition prevented alien empires from preying on them. However, most issues had settled down and it appeared the human nations of the Sagittarius arm might know an age of peace and plenty. But everything changed when the League of Sol attacked! (You just had to go full Fire Nation didn’t you?  Didn’t you!? {If you look into my eyes you’ll see a reviewer with no regret! [You shall have cause to regret!]})

The League of Sol fell on the Coalition of Terra like a mountain but the Coalition was able to fight off the assault and force the League into a nightmare position. That of fighting a long war against a large, industrialized enemy, while you're at the very end of your supply chain and have enemies closer to home (My God.  They did a USSR Turnabout! {bound to happen eventually}). The League wasn't completely brain dead, however, deciding not to open hostilities to the non-Coalition worlds, who would now be referred to as the neutral worlds. Instead deciding to play on the resentments and preexisting rivalries to try and diplomatically and economically isolate the Coalition. Enter Captain James Henry, disgraced former naval officer of the Coalition turned independent spacer. Captain and owner of the Shadow Wolf, a cargo ship with a souped-up engine and a diverse and skilled crew of professionals ranging from the former socialist revolutionary from a megacorp dominated planet, Tia, the escaped League of Sol doctor Oskar, the frankly insanely libertarian Felix, and the alien Yanik and more. In fact, to be honest, the crew is big enough that at times I lose track of some of them. So one practical suggestion I would have for Mr. Stevens and other authors writing ensemble novels like this would be to include a dramatis personae list in the back of your book (Can concur!). Trust me, it'll make things easier for everyone folks. Now that said, the crew that does manage to get a good amount of screen time is colorful enough to stand out and stand on their own. Hopefully, in future books, the rest of the crew will get space to shine.

Breach of Faith takes up right up where Breach of Peace leaves off (In fact, full disclosure, they were intended to be one book, but the editor and Gibbs forced the split.). Merchant ships had been disappearing at a higher rate than normal in neutral space and Captain Henry was hired by three competing interests on the planet Lusitania, one of the strongest and wealthiest of the neutral planets, to find and bring back a survivor of one of those disappearances, Ms. Karla Lupa. This was complicated in that each of the three were pretty opposed to the other, one for example being the leader of the planetary fascist party and the other being the minister of trade for the unity government looking to tame the fascist (You can’t work with the fash, and you cannot tame them.  The only solution to fascism is the death of the fascists.) and the third being the local Coalition spymaster. Because Karla Lupa is telling everyone it was the League who hijacked her trading ship and everyone wants to hear this story first hand. A further complication is brought about when Karla Lupa turns out to be Miri Gaon, a legendary Coalition spy whose infiltration of the League caused one of their greatest defeats in the war. Which explains why, when she realized that the League had seized the trading ship she was working on, she stole a spacesuit, a radio beacon, and a bunch of oxygen tanks and jumped ship (I certainly would have done the same thing.  Just nope right out of there!  Take my chances in the void!). Because if the League catches her, they're throwing her out of an airlock without a spacesuit. To top it off, because Mr. Stevens can't cut his characters a break (He really can’t), there's another problem when the Shadow Wolf limps into a landing on Lusitania. Someone blew up the planetary parliament! Killing most of the ministers and assembly members and now the planet is in chaos as everyone tries to figure out who set off the bombs and why. Captain Henry faces the fact that he might have escaped the deep space forces of the League to have thrustered right into a trap. He'll have to navigate a situation that is increasingly escalating into a possible civil war and that's without even considering what the League is doing. I do want to take a moment to mention that I really enjoy the work Mr. Stevens put into Lusitania here. He provides us with a complex political and social situation in a multicultural state that is fracturing under the weight of the contradictions of its laws and the needs of its citizens.  Mr. Stevens also takes care to provide us some native Lusitanian citizens in both books to give us an inside view of the situation, even as he blows up the situation he's set up and pushes everything to the breaking point. Of course, this is only a small part of the dangers facing Captain Henry; because even if he escapes Lusitania the League is still mustering forces, including its fleet of stolen ships for some hidden purpose and the League knows Captain Henry's role in things so far. A role that makes the forces of the League decidedly unhappy with him.

Captain Henry will have to build his own coalition of unlikely allies to figure out whatever the League's plan is, counter it and get enough evidence to expose it to the galaxy. Which will mean cutting deals with pirates, knife happy psychopaths with a grudge, and worse making dubious bacon-centered deals with alien nomads. Mr. Stevens doesn't pull any punches here; imagine having to sit down to dinner and be civil with a man who was trying to kidnap you a few days ago and might have killed someone who helped you just to give one example. Another piece of stress that Captain Henry has to manage is the fact that the intelligence services of the Coalition are involved in this and might be trying to recruit him to serve a nation he's pretty sure he wants nothing to do with anymore. He'll have to thread all these conflicting loyalties and desires however if he's going to survive and protect his crew and you know, prevent the League from conquering human space and snuffing out the idea of religious, economic, or individual freedom. Mr. Stevens gives us a story that takes intrigue, political wheeling, and dealing, and blends it with gunfights and fleet battles. Along with some simmering popular uprisings for flavor of course (The best kind.). It was a fun and easy read and I was honestly caught off guard by a couple of the plot twists but I was never left feeling that the plot twist was unbelievable. Mr. Stevens also frankly does a better job with the villains in this universe, although there are times when I feel his work is something along the manner of frantically gluing layers to a cardboard cut out to create some depth to the League of Sol. The League Admiral Hartford for example comes across as a patriot and a professional member of a military fleet and above all else a human being. He treats his crew reasonably, he learns from mistakes, and carries grudges. On the flip side, we also get Commander Li of the security forces, who is an out and out fanatic who screamingly compares individualism to being a murderer. This does add a bit of depth to the League but they still come off as a bit flat to me but I can't blame Mr. Stevens for that. Of course, not everyone arrayed against the League is a shiny paladin of justice, as we have pirates who Mr. Stevens makes clear are very dangerous and brutal people, and Mr. Kepper, the professional psychopath out to teach people why you don't make the work personal. Mr. Stevens' willingness not to pull any punches and blend of good character work and exceptional world-building along with a plot with enough turns for high-speed car chase creates a fun book that you'll enjoy if you like space opera with a bit of gray. That said, the book is at times overcrowded with characters and the pace gets a bit too frantic as Mr. Stevens tries to tie everything up. Breach of Faith by Daniel Gibs and Gary Stevens gets an A-, try reading Breach of Peach and Breach of Faith back to back so you get the full story all at once.

I hope you enjoyed this week's review, if you did consider joining our ever-wise patrons at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads where for as little as a dollar a month you get votes on upcoming reviews, themes and more!  Hope to see you there.  So next week, we kick off a little event we're calling Fangsgiving!  For the whole month of October, we'll be focusing on a singular character that has dictated in a lot of ways how we see a classic monster of the night!  We'll be paying tribute to the original count of the night, Count Dracula.  First we'll be looking at the historical figure that inspired Dracula, Vlad Tepes in Dracula, Prince of Many Faces: His Life and His Times by Radu Florescu and Raymond T. McNally.  Then we'll be looking at the official prequel to the novel Dracula, written by Brom Stokers' great nephew and JD Barker.  From there we move on to the novel itself and then the long lost Icelandic adaptation that turned into its own novel.  We hope y'all enjoy the upcoming reviews.  Until then though, stay safe and Keep Reading. 

Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

Normal text is your reviewer Garvin Anders 

Dwarves Vol. II: Ordo of Retaliation By Nicolas Jarry

Dwarves Vol. II: Ordo of Retaliation

By Nicolas Jarry

“The power of a dwarf is measured by the number of secrets he keeps”

Urus, House Ettorn

So it's been 2 years since I reviewed a book from this series. Which is a lot longer than I meant to let it lie, so let's take it from the top. Dwarves is a French fantasy comic series by comic book writer and novelist Nicolas Jarry. He was born on the 19th of June in 1976, in Rosny-sous-Bois, which is a commune (which functions sorta like a township) in the eastern suburbs of Paris, France. He studied biology at Bordeaux, became a supervisor at a school, and then worked as a sales specialist in the comics department at the Marbot bookstore (That’s an interesting pivot). None of his novels have been translated into English as far as I can find, but they are listed as the two-volume Chronicles of a Warrior Sînamm, and the Wolf of Deb trilogy. It's after meeting comic book writer Jean Luc Istin that he turned to writing comics. Dwarves is published by Delcourt, the 3rd largest publisher of Franco-Belgian comics, founded in 1986 by the merger of two magazines Charlie Mensuel and Pilote. Dwarves is part of a shared world with at least three other series, Elves, Orcs, and Goblins and Mages all set in the same world. Each graphic novel follows a different character who occupies a different part of their race's society and faces different challenges. So each graphic novel is more or less stand-alone, although some are more interrelated than others, for example, my second review in this series jumped to Vol VI since it covered the life of the son of the main character of Vol I.

Dwarves, as you might have guessed dear readers, is devoted to exploring the society and viewpoint of the Dwarfish race so let me give you some background. Unlike the Anglo tradition of placing Dwarves below ground, these Dwarves live above ground divided into fortress-states ruled mostly by Kings. The Fortress-states are united by orders that function as guilds or castes maintaining the interests and knowledge of their craft across borders. The orders not only function as guilds but as political power blocks seeking to control the Kings and governments of the Dwarves behind the scenes. There is a caste-like function to the orders in that it seems most members are born into them and membership in an order dictates your role and prestige in society however as we saw in Volume I, which I reviewed wayyyy back in 2017 there is some social mobility. Volume II focuses on the Order of Retaliation which functions as the merchants and bankers but also controls all the vice industries: prostitution, drugs, etc. They use this as a way of keeping the Kings and Nobility off their backs through a combination of bribery and blackmail; so not only are they constantly tempting the wealthy and powerful into corruption, they also blackmail you when you fall. It's as if the Chamber of Commerce was also run by the Mob (The Chamber of Commerce is just as corrupt. {Don't think the Chamber of Commerce is running its own secret society of assassins just to start with, so I'm gonna disagree}). More importantly for our story, there's a third-string to the Order's bow, that being the Black Lodge, a secret society of Dwarves raised from the age of six to be assassins, thieves, and spies. Including our main character Ordo.

Ordo is one of those guys who if he didn't have bad luck, would have no luck. He was born the sixth son on the sixth day on the sixth moon to a powerful family in the Order of Retaliation. On his sixth birthday, he was handed over to a master of the black lodge, who took a six-year-old boy to the worse hell hole neighborhood of the city and left him there alone overnight. As Ordo explains to us, this is done to every child taken by the Black Lodge. Only the ones who survive even get to start the training. The training has a lot in common with the worse ways to train child soldiers or induct men into terrorist organizations. By turning them against each other and forcing them to break social and moral taboos simply to survive, most will give up their own social bonds and identities believing themselves too morally soiled to go back home. Also by turning them against each other, you prevent them from working together against you or finding better ways around your training (If you ever want to see a good visual on how this works, do yourself a favor[?] and go watch Blood Diamond. Not a bad film, if a bit White Saviory, but it shows how the RUF in Sierra Leone indoctrinated its child soldiers. Also, you will never want to buy a diamond again. Which is a thing you should never want to do.). This tends to produce broken people capable of awful things simply because they can't believe themselves capable of anything better and it's a pretty vile thing to do. Ordo hasn't broken completely though, he still holds on to a piece of himself by holding on to his love of his sister. Even though he avoids interacting with her out of fear of what would mean for her. After years of working for the Black Lodge, Ordo is ready to do the one thing he's been thinking of doing since that forsaken night of his sixth birthday. Get his revenge on the Black Lodge and the Order of Retaliation. He's got the plan, he's got the intel he needs, he's got the talent but he needs a team. So Ordo recruits Heba, a fellow member of the Lodge who has been marked for death and another survivor of their training class, and Panham, a half-dwarf dragon rider. His plan is to break into the Black Lodge's greatest fortress of Fort Drae and steal or destroy their greatest treasures, crippling their ability to operate (You go Ordo! Seize the means!). However, his old master Abekash is on his trail and is looking to correct his mistakes with Ordo, by killing him because that's how a master assassin corrects mistakes.

While the last two volumes that we reviewed of the Dwarves series were about family, this is more about the individual. Ordo's struggle isn't to escape a father's shadow or find his way in the world. Ordo's struggle is to find a way to strike back at the people who tried to claim ownership of his very soul and avenge the massive wrongs they've done to him and others. To do that he'll use every skill and trick they taught him but he'll have to learn new skills and tricks to make it work and whether he can or not is a question in and of itself. Despite the level of intrigue he's operating at, Ordo is a fairly straight forward character to grasp and you find yourself horrified and sympathetic in turns. Horrified at what's been done to him and what he does to others to affect his revenge but sympathetic to his efforts to try and hold on to the barest scrap of himself and not be subsumed by this monstrous thing he's been sold to by his own family. This makes him interesting if nothing else, his struggle to hold on to that piece of his soul, to avoid completely surrendering to darkness, keeps him from becoming a boring stereotype. Which is good because he does balance on that knife's edge at times. Also, I have to admit the story simply isn't as compelling or powerful as Volume I and lacks the same punch. Additionally, the supporting characters are rather one-note although that may be for a lack of time. I would have liked to know more about Heba for example but I suppose there just wasn't space for it. Dwarves Volume II by Nicolas Jarry gets a B from me. Still worth a read if not as great as Volumes I and VI.

So as you may have noticed dear readers, our editor has rejoined us! Hope the capture teams were gentle to you Doc! (They were not!) So Dwarves II was voted for by our ever-wise patrons, if you to would like a vote on future reviews, themes and other ideas, join us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads a vote is just a dollar a month and lets us focus more on reviews. Next week, we bring September to a close-by looking at Breach of Faith by Gary T Stevens and Daniel Gibbs, the sequel to Breach of Peace from last month. Until then, stay safe and as always Keep Reading.

Red text is your editor Dr. Allen 
Normal text is your editor Garvin 

Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic By Tom Holland

Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic

By Tom Holland

This is Mr. Holland's 4th book in this review series, in our first year I reviewed Persian Fire and more recently I reviewed In the Shadow of the Sword and Millennium. While I would ask that no one look at my first-year reviews, I do urge everyone to read the books I've mentioned here. Since it's been so long, let's go back over who Mr. Holland is. Tom Holland was born January 5th, 1968 in Oxfordshire and brought up in the village of Broad Chalke, England. He attended Queen's College, Cambridge, and graduated with a double first. He headed over to Oxford and began work on a Ph.D. crafting a dissertation on Lord Byron but fed up with being a starving student turned to writing for a living. His first books actually used his research on Lord Byron (I could see Lord Byron himself as a vampire to be honest, especially with the modern interpretation of vampires being highly id-driven) to craft a pair of Gothic Horror novels about vampires. In fact, using his historic knowledge to create supernatural horror books swiftly became a calling card of his, and doing research for his last fiction book The Bone Hunter, led to reigniting his passion for antiquity and he resolved to turn to nonfiction. This led to him being involved in documentaries like Dinosaurs, Myths, and Monsters, ISIS the Origins and Violence and Islam: The Untold Story, which was based on one of his nonfiction works. He currently lives in London with his wife and two daughters. Rubicon, the topic of today's review, was actually his first nonfiction book published in 2003 by Random House.

There is no ancient civilization that holds the imagination and focus of the western world like the Roman Empire. Perhaps because it's one of the common roots of western civilization, maybe it's the sheer amount of history from its thousand-year existence, or the vibrant color and savagery of that history juxtaposed on an obsession with law and order, or that fact that until recently it was the closest that Europe had to a united government in history. Rubicon focuses on the period where Rome transitioned from a city-state republic with a large subservient empire to an empire ruled from the city of Rome by an Emperor. To explain what I mean by that, I'm going to steal a metaphor used recently by a friend of mine. Imagine that the United States was ruled by the city council of Washington D.C with the Mayor serving as the executive (oh man and you thought the late ’80s were insane in our reality imagine how this would have gone down). On top of that, only people who are awarded residency of the city by that council and their descendants, who are physically present in the city on the day of elections are allowed to vote. You can imagine the challenge of administering a continent with a city government but that's exactly what the Romans were attempting and as Mr. Holland shows us the Republic simply wasn't to stand up the stress. Of course, that's not the only issue bringing the firestorm about to engulf the entire Mediterranean world. There was also the issue of the character of the Romans, especially their upper class, and how that very character that had gained them control of the world as they knew it also caused them to turn on each other and almost burn it all down around their ears. If there wasn't enough wood on this fire, there were also the resentments and simmering social issues of the city and Italy. Because the lower classes had a thing or two to say about this as well and so did the men and women of the other cities of Italy, many of whom had provided the soldiers, ships, and money to gain those impressive conquests and damn it all they wanted their fair cut of the spoils! But! There is still more fuel for the flames here! Because on top of that was a West-East conflict, which fueled Roman anxieties, paranoia, greed, and above all else ambition. Because if there was one thing that served as a spark and oil to this towering metaphorical tower of wood (I get what you mean but I feel like this metaphor got a bit bigger than originally intended and became difficult to manage...oooooh kinda like the Roman Empire at this time in history), it was ambition because for the first time in history all the power and wealth of the nations of the Mediterranean was made the stakes of a single game. A game that would bring the kind of fame that rings down through the millennia to even the losers of the conflict and to the winners? Even greater fame and power over millions of lives and wealth to match.

Mr. Holland sets the stage in the opening of the book, explaining the belief that the Romans had in the prophecy of the Sybil, which was a kind of oracle. The Romans had a story that a woman appeared to the last king of Rome, offering to sell him 9 books for an incredibly high price. He refused laughingly. Her response was to burn 3 of them and offer to sell him 6 books for the same price, disturbed he refused again, only to see her burn another 3. Feeling panic that he had already made a terrible mistake he offered her anything she wanted for the last 3 books. They were books of prophecy of terrible dangers to the city of Rome and how doom could be averted. Because unlike the Greeks, the Romans believe the point of prophecy was to avert the future, otherwise what was the point of a prophecy in the first place? (The Sarah Conner approach personally I find it a bit more useful than going mad from accidentally murdering one of my parents) The prophecies themselves were treated as state secrets, the books hidden away in the main temple of Jupiter, and only accessible to a specific priest and his apprentice. They were only to be opened and read in the gravest of times. The prophecies were not to be copied or uttered out loud, only the remedies that the book suggested were written down and carried out post-haste. This didn't stop things from getting out although and there was more than one oracle in the ancient world. So as Rome grew in power and reach, as army after army was shattered by the legions and great powers fell one after another whispers spread. That the doom of Rome wouldn't be found on foreign lands and the greatest danger to Rome wasn't from without but from within. That Rome's own sons would be the ones to set the Republic ablaze and tear everything down. (Isn’t that how it always feels though? Things seem to rot from inside {I think Carthage, the Rus, the British Saxons to name a few would disagree, there are plenty of states and cultures destroyed by outside forces})

Mr. Holland starts of course with the system under strain and everyone knowing it but resisting reforms as too radical and unthinkable. Part of that was that the reforms would involve the wealthy and powerful giving things up, through actions like land reform and the poorest Romans gaining subsidized food and clothes. These reforms were championed by people in the noble classes but not by the majority of the noble class, the most notable reformers being the Gracchi brothers, who were basically murdered in the streets to prevent their programs from happening. From there Mr. Holland takes us to the conflict between successful generals Marius and Sulla. Italy had just exploded into rebellion, as the Italian states grew increasingly frustrated at carrying the burden of empire but not reaping the rewards. Sulla would show his abilities in putting this rebellion down but right as he finished a greater war with greater profits would ignite. At this point, Rome had an empire in the East, over the greek states in what is today Greece and parts of Turkey. However, there was foreign resistance led by Mithridates, who convinced Roman subjects to rebel and join him by murdering over 80,000 Roman citizens. Both Marius and Sulla, wildly successful military commanders fought to be elected to the post of consol and therefore leader of the army to put down Mithridates and more importantly, plunder the wealthy east. Sulla won but was stripped of his command after he left Rome. (wait did they really just decide to oust the person who had a huge army at his command and was about to head to war? {Even better, it was the army he had trained and lead in a prior war}) His reaction was to launch a military coup(like you do), which would lead to a military dictatorship and in generations ever after a whisper in the back of the head of every great Roman “If Sulla could do it... Why not you?” One of those Romans was a young man, who came within inches of being executed by Sulla but was spared by the intervention of his mother. Despite sparing him, Sulla predicted this young man was going to be nothing but trouble. Since the young man we're talking about is Julius Caesar, entire nations would end up agreeing with Sulla.

As you might have guessed, Julius Caesar does take center stage in the book but I do like how Mr. Holland is able to keep Caesar from monopolizing the book. Instead, he takes pains to show us the other people involved in this drama who would swing from allies, neutrals to enemies, and back throughout the climax of the multi-generational conflict of how the Roman Empire was going to be ruled and by who. It's here in the book that we go from a system under strain, to one that has simply snapped under pressure and everyone is brawling in the wreckage for the right to be the man who dictates the new reality. So Mr. Holland takes us through the lives of other major players in the conflict and even the supporting players. We are taken through the careers of men like Cato, Cicero, Senators of Rome who impossibly sought to maintain the old system and turn back the clock (why does this always feel like a bad idea?). Men like Crassus, Mark Antony, and Clodius who didn't care about the system or what replaced it so much as what power and profit they could wring from it (also a bad idea..). It's not just the Romans we look at, Mr. Holland takes time to look at others who played a role like Cleopatra, although he doesn't spend too much time on the foreign-born players in this drama. The man I learned most about was Pompey, who the Romans called Pompey the great. For most people, Pompey is kind of an also-ran when compared to Caesar but Mr. Holland gives Caesar's rival here the space to examine his life and show his accomplishments which are many and impressive. From recruiting his own army at the age of 25 and leading it on a string of victories from Spain to Syria until losing out finally to Caesar late in his life. Mr. Holland is also careful to provide context and the cultural information to show why these men and women made the decisions they did and how because of the times and places they were part of, certain decisions just weren't realistic or doable.

I don't have to tell you that we live in tense times, but I do think we should resist the urge to draw any parallels directly. For one thing, our system is a lot more robust and we're not fighting a civil war in our very living rooms. In fact, I would argue that the 1960s and 1850s were much tenser times for the US specifically. Now I know that's not at all comforting to the people suffering right here and now but I believe it will not be in vain and there will be a better tomorrow. So do not surrender to despair just yet readers. That said that doesn't mean we can't take lessons from this period of time and that it doesn't have relevance to us. What we can learn from this book is that traditions, customs, and even the systems of law and government that we use to maintain our lives are things that serve a purpose. They are a means, not an end (in other words don’t keep doing the same thing just because that's how it's always been done). As such they must change and be changed with the times and the demands of those times. There is no system that cannot be improved or reformed to work better and we resist any reform when we demand that the world stop changing... That's when we're most at risk of losing it all and having the kind of breakdowns that lead to men like Sulla and Caesar marching armies in the streets. This is a lesson our forefathers knew and one we need to relearn. If nothing else Rubicon serves as a valuable testament to the need for that lesson. Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland gets an A. Read it and remember to vote this year. (Hey guest editor Mr. Davis here: As someone who’s pay and livelihood depends largely on the whims of elected officials please don’t get stuck on just the national elections. Check your local candidates see what they stand for all the way down to the city council and/or school board, there are some challenges I am facing now that might have been a little easier if local officials had followed the recommended plans)

I like to thank our guest reviewer, Mr. Davis, for his hard work this week. Our regular editor Dr. Allen will be joining us next week according to the capture teams. The Rubicon was selected by our ever-wise patrons, who vote every month on what books get reviewed and at higher levels get to select what books I buy for future reviews. The lowest level which grants you a vote on book reviews, theme months and more is only a 1$ a month at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads Hope to see you there! Next week, we return to the world of French comic books with Dwarves Vol II by Nicolas Jarry. Until then, stay safe and as always Keep Reading!

Green text is your editor Mr. Davis
Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders