Chris reviewed Anno Dracula by Kim Newman (Anno Dracula, #1)
Bloody good fun
Kim Newman isn't afraid to take a good idea and run with it. He may be the most innovative Horror / Fantasy writer we have at present. He is also very prolific, and the latest result of this prolificacy is Anno Dracula. This takes as its basis Stoker's original Dracula, diverging at the point where Dracula is defeated. In this version of the tale, the victorious vampire Count marries the widowed Queen Victoria and begins a steady repopulation of London with his own kind. Vampires hold the positions of high office, and 'warm' people - the unturned - are viewed with distrust or hostility. Van Helsing's head adorns a stake outside Buckingham Palace along with those of other enemies of the realm; and Dracula being who he is (Vlad Tepes, 'the Impaler'), sometimes it's not just the head that goes on a stake. Vampirism is fashionable, Gilbert & Sullivan write …
Kim Newman isn't afraid to take a good idea and run with it. He may be the most innovative Horror / Fantasy writer we have at present. He is also very prolific, and the latest result of this prolificacy is Anno Dracula. This takes as its basis Stoker's original Dracula, diverging at the point where Dracula is defeated. In this version of the tale, the victorious vampire Count marries the widowed Queen Victoria and begins a steady repopulation of London with his own kind. Vampires hold the positions of high office, and 'warm' people - the unturned - are viewed with distrust or hostility. Van Helsing's head adorns a stake outside Buckingham Palace along with those of other enemies of the realm; and Dracula being who he is (Vlad Tepes, 'the Impaler'), sometimes it's not just the head that goes on a stake. Vampirism is fashionable, Gilbert & Sullivan write operas about vampires, and in Whitechapel there's a flourishing trade in blood for money.
Cue the Gothic underbelly of late 19th-century London, cutpurses, pure-finders, cly-fakers, mutchers, Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, Fu Manchu, Dr Moreau, Jack the Ripper ...
We're back in Newman's cinematic omniverse watching the shadows race across the wall. Someone is cutting up vampire prostitutes in the East End, replacing their Dark Kiss with a darker one of silver-edged steel. The secret cabal of the Diogenes Club calls for investigations which point more and more to corruption in high places, though what could be more corrupt than the awful gothicity of Vlad Tepes's court? A major player in this drama is Genevieve Dieudonne', whom we have met in Drachenfels and is also the key character of other stories of Newman's. This resourceful 400-year-old Undead girl works on the Ripper case with the Diogenes's man Charles Beauregard, while caring for the victims of failed attempts at vampirisation.
What's so good though is the background and the readability of the whole thing. Yes, it does draw heavily on our perceptions of the late 19th century, and if there isn't actually anyone walking along the Strand whistling ''Yesterday'', there are references to Brecht, Wedekind and Weill, signalling that what we have is not so much the True History (oh, that gets a mention too) of the Ripper murders as an extrusion of its cultural identity. The legend, if you like, rather than the real thing. This book could be seen as the third avatar of Kim Newman's gormenghastly adventure begun in Bad Dreams and continued in Jago. And true to its gothic intentions, the references fire in like overkill. We have for example a chapter about the Commercial Street Police station called 'Commercial Street Blues'. Lestrade of the Yard figures largely (Holmes, always problematic when discussing the Ripper - 'Holmes would have caught him' - is in a concentration camp on the Sussex Downs). Newman's list of sources is extensive and shows he's also done his reading in the books of the period.
Anno Dracula is also a political fable: about the way that the ruling classes are no longer just in better positions than the rest of the people, but have become in some way different. Previously, the intent of those in power was obvious: more power, more money. Anyone could identify with that; in a smaller way, that was what people wanted in their own lives. But then the rules changed drastically, and for the majority of people the very intentions of the rulers became baffling. It was as though an alien hand held the reins of power; a baleful intelligence was seated on the throne and no reasoning would edge it off.
And Anno Dracula is also bloody good fun. Read it.
