I kind of had a love/like/WTF relationship with this book. It's so darn clever and yet ridiculous at the same time. The characters are exaggerations and silly. And the dialogue, Gah!

On top of that, the "rules" for this whole vampirism thing make no sense at all, and there are no explanations for how they figured out those rules. The good doctor just knows from some dude who told him and assumed it all to be true, no matter how far fetched.

But still, Dracula is an enjoyable romp that explores some interesting themes that I'm unsure the author knew were even there.

This Everyman Library edition (they are always the best editions) includes an introduction by Joan Acocella who concludes with "Dracula is like the work of other nineteenth-century writers. You can complain that their novels are loose, baggy monsters, that their poems are crazy and unfinished. Still, you gasp at what they're saying: the truth." I think I can agree with that.