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Anno Dracula #2.1
Anno Dracula 1923: Vampire Romance
Set in 1923, Geneviève Dieudonné is recruited by Winthrop and the Diogenes Club to attend a meeting of elders in Mildew Manor. There, the elders are seeking to elect a new "King of the Cats" to replace Dracula.
152 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 2012
About the author
Kim Newman
285 books958 followersNote: This author also writes under the pseudonym of Jack Yeovil.
An expert on horror and sci-fi cinema (his books of film criticism include Nightmare Movies and Millennium Movies), Kim Newman's novels draw promiscuously on the tropes of horror, sci-fi and fantasy. He is complexly and irreverently referential; the Dracula sequence--Anno Dracula, The Bloody Red Baron and Dracula,Cha Cha Cha--not only portrays an alternate world in which the Count conquers Victorian Britain for a while, is the mastermind behind Germany's air aces in World War One and survives into a jetset 1950s of paparazzi and La Dolce Vita, but does so with endless throwaway references that range from Kipling to James Bond, from Edgar Allen Poe to Patricia Highsmith.
In horror novels such as Bad Dreams and Jago, reality turns out to be endlessly subverted by the powerfully malign. His pseudonymous novels, as Jack Yeovil, play elegant games with genre cliche--perhaps the best of these is the sword-and-sorcery novel Drachenfels which takes the prescribed formulae of the games company to whose bible it was written and make them over entirely into a Kim Newman novel.
Life's Lottery, his most mainstream novel, consists of multiple choice fragments which enable readers to choose the hero's fate and take him into horror, crime and sf storylines or into mundane reality.
An expert on horror and sci-fi cinema (his books of film criticism include Nightmare Movies and Millennium Movies), Kim Newman's novels draw promiscuously on the tropes of horror, sci-fi and fantasy. He is complexly and irreverently referential; the Dracula sequence--Anno Dracula, The Bloody Red Baron and Dracula,Cha Cha Cha--not only portrays an alternate world in which the Count conquers Victorian Britain for a while, is the mastermind behind Germany's air aces in World War One and survives into a jetset 1950s of paparazzi and La Dolce Vita, but does so with endless throwaway references that range from Kipling to James Bond, from Edgar Allen Poe to Patricia Highsmith.
In horror novels such as Bad Dreams and Jago, reality turns out to be endlessly subverted by the powerfully malign. His pseudonymous novels, as Jack Yeovil, play elegant games with genre cliche--perhaps the best of these is the sword-and-sorcery novel Drachenfels which takes the prescribed formulae of the games company to whose bible it was written and make them over entirely into a Kim Newman novel.
Life's Lottery, his most mainstream novel, consists of multiple choice fragments which enable readers to choose the hero's fate and take him into horror, crime and sf storylines or into mundane reality.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
December 5, 2015
An excellent mash-up of the country house murder mystery and the children-have-an-adventure story.
February 2, 2018
I actually read this as a novella annex to the second book, The Bloody Red Baron
02/02/2018 - the second book, a novella in comparison, is called Vampire Romance. It flicks between two view points, the French elder vampire Geneviere, who has taken on a job for the Dieudonne Club, and Lydia, a silly teenage girl who is back at the family home from boarding school. It's the 1920s and it's all flapper girls, short haircuts and art nouveau. There's a meeting at Lydia's family home up in the Lake District, for a selection of elders to meet up and decide who should become the king of vampires "king of cats" now that Dracula's been thoroughly pushed out of the picture. Lydia's full of overly romantic ideals and barely lives in the real world and has hopes of meeting her one true love in vampire form (my god, is this the forewarning to Twilight? Or a response to it?), but she experiences the reality of vampires against the gothic romantic ideal that weekend. Geneviere is there to investigate the crooked men, a subversive cult that has sprung up in the country and is looking to cause a lot of trouble. And then the living dead start dropping completely dead. Here comes your spiffing country house murder mystery.
It feels like there's ideas here for a full blown novel (the plot of the crooked men for instance) but whether due to time or inclination it's come out as a whimsical little ditty instead. It's a chance to get a few of the old favourite characters back out, as well as Geneviere from the first, there's Winthrop from the second and Dravot from both books. Lydia is tiresome as we have to read a lot of what's going on in her head, but I don't suppose she was ever intended to be anything but irritating. It's all right, but definatly feels like an annex to a larger novel rather than anything in its own right.
02/02/2018 - the second book, a novella in comparison, is called Vampire Romance. It flicks between two view points, the French elder vampire Geneviere, who has taken on a job for the Dieudonne Club, and Lydia, a silly teenage girl who is back at the family home from boarding school. It's the 1920s and it's all flapper girls, short haircuts and art nouveau. There's a meeting at Lydia's family home up in the Lake District, for a selection of elders to meet up and decide who should become the king of vampires "king of cats" now that Dracula's been thoroughly pushed out of the picture. Lydia's full of overly romantic ideals and barely lives in the real world and has hopes of meeting her one true love in vampire form (my god, is this the forewarning to Twilight? Or a response to it?), but she experiences the reality of vampires against the gothic romantic ideal that weekend. Geneviere is there to investigate the crooked men, a subversive cult that has sprung up in the country and is looking to cause a lot of trouble. And then the living dead start dropping completely dead. Here comes your spiffing country house murder mystery.
It feels like there's ideas here for a full blown novel (the plot of the crooked men for instance) but whether due to time or inclination it's come out as a whimsical little ditty instead. It's a chance to get a few of the old favourite characters back out, as well as Geneviere from the first, there's Winthrop from the second and Dravot from both books. Lydia is tiresome as we have to read a lot of what's going on in her head, but I don't suppose she was ever intended to be anything but irritating. It's all right, but definatly feels like an annex to a larger novel rather than anything in its own right.
June 23, 2021
A very fun novella! The character of Lydia was an absolute treat; I loved the chapters written in her POV. The intrigue and politics were well-managed for a shorter story length. I was a little disappointed in how passive Geneviève was in general. I was hoping to see her *doing* a bit more in working out the mystery.
November 10, 2025
Vampires gather at Mildew Manor to decide who will be the new King Of The Cats. Murder occurs, can Genvieve catch the killer before they strike again? No! They strike again! Meanwhile a dotty schoolgirl startstruck by the glamour of vampirism learns a thing or two about real vampires with the help of her new vampire schoolgirl samurai friend.
April 11, 2020
Pretty good interlude novella that takes place after book 2. I think I like the character of Genevieve more than anyone else in these books. She was totally absent from Book 2. Hopefully she'll be back in Book 3, but we'll see.
August 12, 2024
Newman's vampires are a fun lot. This novella brought in some new, fun historical figures to play with. It poked fun at other popular vampire fiction (and it's fans), but was never mean-spirited about it.
April 29, 2019
Much more interesting than the novel its attached to, its works like a whodunit. Some interesting characters, it would possibly work as a full length.
February 14, 2024
Enjoyable short story to fill in a small time gap between books
October 15, 2018
Kim Newman writes a murder mystery - with vampires! It's obvious that he decided to kick back and enjoy himself with this one. He takes all these titanic personalities who've had centuries to build up oversized egos and crams them into a small room so they can bicker, strut, and accuse each other of murder. It's pretty hilarious, in both a weird and a distinctly English way. Lydia Inchfawn's early-teens fangirling over handsome vampires may seem daunting to read, but Newman crafts her into an interesting and humorous character in her own right as she learns how nasty these people can be. With a bunch of ludicrous identity reveals thrown in, this is just a really entertaining drawing-room novella.
April 10, 2015
This gets four stars rather than five because while the story is witty and inventive (as in the original Anno) and Geneveive remains awesome, and I loved Lydia and Mouse, the author's awful tin ear for a Yorkshire accent really REALLY ground my gears as a Yorkshire lass.
I really hate the way southerners spell when they write characters who are trying to sound Yorkshire.
I really hate the way southerners spell when they write characters who are trying to sound Yorkshire.
September 1, 2014
Um policial vampírico, muito mais interessante e menos tétrico que o Bllody Red Baron.
Consequentemente, muito menos realista, que é o que a malta quer :)
Consequentemente, muito menos realista, que é o que a malta quer :)
December 29, 2014
A fun little cosy mystery of vampires, school girls, and backstabbing politics.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews