Tomes of Shadowstalking

Welcome to the land of shadows, where evil is the greatest power, where nightfall marks the birth of terror, where your very soul is at risk. Join me as I investigate worlds filled with black magic and dark souls and encounter the monsters rule these wicked places.

This review does not represent the opinions of the general public. It reflects my personal thoughts and opinions on the book.

That said, on to the review!

Dracula was dead, and his curse died with him...yet Mina and her friends are still haunted by dark dreams and nightmares. Small wonder, when one considers their horrific experiences, but Mina's have a depth and quality all her own. Now she wonders whether the tainted vampire blood that she had once partaken of is still active and efficacious within her veins. She wonders if she is yet doomed to become a nosferatu upon her death and to dwell among the vampires of Transylvania for all eternity. But before that can become a problem for her, she has others to deal with. For before she and the others left Castle Dracula, she found and took away a journal in an old Hungarian dialect. Concerned that it might be of some use to her, she sets about seeing to its translation, sparking off a new round of vampire paranoia in hunters of whom only Van Helsing knows about, and he is still in Transylvania seeking more answers of his own. Now not only her soul but her very life is at stake as rabid Romanian expatriates in England seek to capture and destroy that old journal and any lingering taint of the vampire. Will Mina ever find the release from those terrible days that she and the others have so long sought?

Mina--like so many other novels--purports to take up the story of Dracula where it left off. Unlike those other books, however, this text focuses less on the powers of darkness thriving despite Dracula's destruction or his actual survival and more on the people involved and how their experiences in Transylvania and England have changed them.

Perhaps the most compelling aspect of this book is the efforts of Mina to--at Dracula's urging--throw off the constraints of modern British civilization and give rein to her passions and emotions for at least a little while, if not longer. In the original Stoker text Mina describes the "New Woman" and how modern society expects women to behave. Given the age and era, it is small wonder that a woman, having experienced for herself the wild abandon and freedom that Dracula's powers, upbringing, and emotions have engulfed her in, could easily return to the lifestyle that she and all England are accustomed to behold in young women. It's something of a shock to see how far Mina does go to free herself, but it might well have been worse!

If you read any book after reading Dracula, then Mina is definitely one you should think about. Not only does it involve the struggles against the forces of Undeath, you will also get to see the inner workings of the mind of a strong, intelligent, late-Victorian woman. So why not give it a try?

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