This book consists of a series of journal entries, telegrams, memoranda and news articles, written by different people at different times. It's up to the reader to piece together all the events of the book based on all these scraps of information.

The first couple of chapters were riveting, and I really thought the concept worked very well. I was even a little scared, and if I didn't know so much about vampires, and if the genre hadn't been re-interpreted so many ways since this book was published, I think I would've found it even more scary!

The last few chapters, similarly, were action packed and fast paced, and I couldn't put the book down as it sped towards it's grisly conclusion.

The rest of it? A bit disappointing. It's long-winded and difficult to read, and I found myself "zoning out" on more than a handful of occasions, and consequently losing the plot.

For example, Professor Van Helsing is famous in the world of vampire lore, because of his role in Dracula, and I was therefore really looking forward to reading his character in this book. Don't get me wrong, he is an interesting, well-defined character with a lot of depth. But he can go on a bit, and he often has pages and pages of rambling monologue, which means that his real gems of wisdom sometimes get lost in all the ramblings.

All in all, I would say that the book's reputation as a hallmark of the genre is well-deserved, and it's a pretty decent read. It's not particularly well written, though. Oh, and those chapters are long! It took me on average two reading sessions each to read each of them!