The Holmes-Dracula File (The Dracula Files #2) 3Stars

 

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Title: The Holmes-Dracula File
Series: The Dracula Files #2
Author: Fred Saberhagen
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 189
Words: 68K
Publish: 1978

Dracula gets conked on the head, loses his memory for a bit and spends the book tracking down the villains who did this to him. Sherlock Holmes is looking out for a crazy guy who drains people of their blood and a psychopathic doctor. Worlds collide as Dracula and Holmes team up to stop a second Black Plague from enveloping London.

Much, much, much more enjoyable than the previous book. Most of that is because this was a brand new, wholly original story. But still just a 3star read in general. I find it rather ironic that I enjoyed this book more than the previous one but still rated it the same. Part of that is because that’s all this book is worth. It’s a good, disposable read that I have zero interest in ever re-reading.

Thankfully, Dracula doesn’t completely change character here. He’s still the totally unreliable narrator from the first book, with an ego the size of Europe. In this book’s setting, that’s actually a good thing. It worked, unlike in the Dracula Tape. Holmes on the other hand, felt very cardboard cutout’y. Saberhagen uses Doyle’s style of Watson doing the narrating for Holmes’ side of the story and he didn’t quite have the writing chops to fully flesh out a character being written about by another character. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that’s an easy thing at all. Doyle did a masterful job of it and we’re all enriched by him making that conceit a “thing”, but it takes more skill than I feel Saberhagen had. Saberhagen aped it well enough, but didn’t have it down comfortably.

There was one thing that had me rolling eyes though. Holmes and Dracula look similar enough that even Watson gets them mixed up in a bar room brawl (♪bar room blitz♪). Turns out that Dracula is Holmes daddy from an affair Dracula had with Holmes’ serially unfaithful mother. Come on, really? And to make things even more awkward, young Mycroft had to kill Holmes’ mother because she’d turned, or something like that. It was all very “backstory” and didn’t work and made me cringe. And yet now, thinking about it, I’m laughing my head off at how badly it was executed. That obviously wasn’t Saberhagen’s intent, but hey, whatever gets me through the book ;-)

I’m definitely going to be reading more of these, eye rolls and all.

★★★☆☆

From the Publisher

1887, London, Victoria’s Jubilee -- criminals threaten to release thousands of plague infested rats on the day of celebration. The extraordinary powers of the Count and sharp mind of the Master Detective team up to avert a catastrophic public disaster. (And, the reader discovers more than a deerstalker hat and an Invernes Cape in Holmes’ family closet.)