Anno Dracula

[peter]

Have set aside [briefly] my Chrons re-read [possibly significantly at the point in TOT where Linden takes full place center stage as the 'point-of-view charachter {and I'm not a THOOLAH advocate!}] to read a book by Kim Newman called [you guesed it] Anno Dracula.

Set in the late 1800's, the story is in effect an 'alternate history' novel, where the quest to kill Stokers Dracula failed, and London has become, some three years later, a thriving center of vampire proliferation with Dracula ensconsed as no less than Victoria's new husband, following the death of Prince Albert. In the story 'warm-bloods' and vampires co-exist side by side in uneasy truce, and events continue as 'normal'.

The main story arc is that of a series of east-end prostitute murders [ala JTR, in this case known as 'Silver-Knife'] which are investigated by the two main protagonists, an 'elder' female Vampire and a 'warm-blood' member of the British aristocracy. While the story is fun, the main thing that sets the book apart is the use [Verymuch in the style of Alaln Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen] of huge amounts of cultural referencing to the often exotic literature of that particular period. We have meetings with Dr Fu-Manchu, professor Moriaty, Hawley Griffen [aka The Invisible Man] to name but a few. It almost seems that unless one has read extensively the literature of, and set, in this period, one would fail to begin to grasp the full richness of the matereal being presented. The League [OEG] comic books were the acme of achievement in this type of victoriana revisionism, but this book is making a pretty good stab at what it is doing to date and it's nice to read actual text that uses this format as opposed to graphic novels. I'm a sucker for all the old books and read them all loong before I ever even heard of Alan Moore, let alone Kim Newman, so my attention was sure-fire from the start. I don't know how this book would stand up without this reading background, but if you do have it - it's glorious fun!

[peter]

I have discovered in the last 24 hours that 'Anno Dracula' pre-dates TLOEG by some years; I was not aware of this when I posted above and thought I'd better make it clear.