The story is exactly what it sounds like: a mash-up where Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson interact with the characters of Bram Stoker's Dracula and help rid England of the vampire.
Maybe because I love vampire stories (even though I can't deal with any other kind of horror story), this fell kind of flat for me. It was very much a re-hashing of Dracula, and we didn't get any new stuff added to that book, really, until those last sixty pages. That it was new and cool, and I dug it.
Also, Dr. Watson came off as a blundering fool too often for my taste. It was like this was based more on the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce movies than on the canon itself, and I objected to that.
Particularly Good Bits:
To be forced to stand by helplessly and watch one's entire world rushing headlong towards calamity is a descent into deepest Hell (p. 157).
Outside the window, the first snowflakes of winter were enjoying a brief moment of glory before being trod into an unrecognisable slush beneath the traffic upon the street (p. 181).
If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for some scary vampire stuff.
This is my 11th book read and reviewed for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge.
I think I read this once... a long, long time ago, but overall I liked the book where Sherlock Holmes meets the Phantom of the Opera better. ;)
ReplyDeleteCharity, yeah, I would really like to read the POTO one just because Lereaux was a big Doyle fan, and there's speculation that one character (IIRC, the Ratcatcher) was actually Holmes in disguise, so I'd like to see what they do with that.
DeleteHate that Watson is undervalued, but still kinda want to read it.
ReplyDeleteSkye, he does shine toward the end, which is why I liked the ending a lot.
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