Review of 'Anno-Dracula' by Kim Newman

Imagine yourself back to Victorian London: the time of Dracula, Jekyll and Hyde, Sherlock Holmes... Imagine, more specifically, the novel 'Dracula.' Imagine that Van Helsing failed.

This novel deals with the aftermath of such a failure... the success of Count Dracula's incursion into England and the propagation of his vampiric bloodline. Vampirism becomes more than myth in this story; it has become an accepted part of modern existence. It has bred new levels of society. But it has also bred Silver Knife; a vampire killer acting in Whitechapel. The principle characters of this novel include Genevieve, an elder vampire, older than Count Dracula and from a different bloodline, and Charles Beauregard, a member of a mysterious secret society, who has been ordered to investigate Silver Knife. The novel investigates the effect of vampirism on Victorian society, in the context of a variety of characters from different walks of life, and all coming back to the killer, Silver Knife.

The author has remained true to the original Dracula vampire legend, except for the vampiric abhorrence of religious artifacts, which has been written-off as superstition in this novel. The writer has also expanded some of the myths to include a series of different Vampire bloodlines, which encompass a variety of strengths and powers that are not available to all vampires. For example, the ability to shape-change seems to exist exclusively within Count Dracula's bloodline. The author has obviously thought in great detail about these differences and similarities, and carefully explores them through the whole course of the novel. Everything is given away in slow, easy steps so that readers find themselves drawn further and further into the world, until it seems completely real and believable.

While the predominant plot in the novel, the search for Silver Knife, seems relatively simple, the way in which it is developed and explored leaves a much greater insight into the society the author has created. This story is not a murder mystery with vampires; it is a much more detailed account, showing how people have changed and adapted to something that seems mostly inconceivable. Throughout some of the book, the Silver Knife murders seem almost incidental, just a background on which to paint a rich story of life in Victorian London under the Vampire.

The novel makes it incredibly easy to suspend disbelief. The characters, both primary and incidental, are utterly believable, even when they reach into the fantastical. There are repeated mentions of characters from the time (both real and fictional) and how they have fitted themselves into the new world that has arisen, which makes the book slip far more easily from fantasy into potential reality. On occasion, modern attitudes creep into the novel, which sometimes do not entirely seem to fit the time period. At other times the more graphic descriptions do border on the gratuitous, but for the most part, even these things allow the reader to be more thoroughly immersed in the world that has been created.

Whether the reader is looking for a ripping-yarn plot, and intriguing story line, or a beautifully described world and characters, this book delivers, in excellent style. Above this, it is possibly the best vampire novel I have ever read.