No, denizens, this isn’t a reprint of my previous BookBin entry. See, there was a reason why I chose to re-read a book that I knew I had no intention of giving away. I wanted to refresh my memory and prepare myself for my first reading of the “official” sequel to Stoker’s classic.

First, a little bit of history. Bram Stoker’s orginal Dracula is considered to be part of the public domain here in the United States. It’s fallen under this classification since 1899. Why? Because apparently Stoker failed to comply with one requirement from the U.S. copyright office and…POOF. No more U.S. copyright. Open season was pretty much declared on the Dracula story by all interested American parties at that point, each knowing that they would never have to consult with any member of the Stoker family and each in turn slowly whittling away the dignity of the Dark Prince.

Swoop ahead 200 sparkling years later to the 2009 release of Dracula: The Un-Dead. Touted as “The Sequel to the Original Classic,” this is the Stoker family’s attempt to reclaim the rights to their ancestor’s legacy. The book is co-written by Dracula historian Ian Holt and Dacre Stoker, Bram’s great-grandnephew.

I’m not going to lie: Seeing a new Dracula book with the Stoker name on the cover? Gave me little chills and tingles, denizens. With all the insipid and uninspired nonsense that has come down the pipeline in recent years regarding the vampire mythology, I was elated to see that someone might actually want to put things right once more.

Yeah.

Where to begin. Were this in no way associated with the names Stoker or Dracula…if it were presented as its own original story…I might actually have nice things to say about it. It’s a decent enough story with characters that, if they were original to this tale, would be an intriguing (though decidedly miserable) melange of personalities, characteristics, and attributes. I would still have problems with certain aspects of the story, but not nearly as many as I have with it as the “official” sequel to Stoker’s novel.

As the official sequel, Dracula: The Un-Dead is a murky mash-up in which the real and the fictional mingle in oftentimes disturbingly meta ways (including interactions between Bram Stoker himself and his characters), and which ultimately devolves into a disappointing concession to the years of bastardization that our dear Dark Prince has suffered at the hands of far less talented writers than Stoker.

The real Stoker, that is.

At first, I thought that my only major issue with Dracula: The Un-Dead would be the “character” of Countess Elizabeth B