Mina: The Dracula Story Continues [Paperback]

I'd say there are spoilers, but you can't really spoil something that's pretty sour to begin with.

This is the first fiction book I've read since Benny was born, I think. It was a solid meuh. This premise is that after being the object of Count Dracula's lust and obsession, there's no way Mina Harker can go back to being a timid Victorian housewife, especially since his wild blood runs in her veins. So what happens from the time her journal entries are no longer included in Stoker's book, and after they all go home? The book is a combination of Mina's journal entries and third-person omniscient narrative. In keeping with the original, there's lots of swooning and fainting and getting terribly ill at the drop of a hat. Actually it seems like everybody is constantly getting sick with some inexplicable malady or bedridden by some shock.

It's written as a mediocre bodice-ripper. There's a few hot and heavy scenes, but they're kind of gawky and awkward, like the author couldn't decide if she were going to make it "real" literature or literary porn, so she went for a really weak middle ground and threw in random sex scenes. Maybe it was because there needed to be something to keep the reader going, because the story lost most of its interest pretty quickly.

There was no fidelity to the original characters or what they'd been through. They did things totally out of keeping with their previous experiences (like Jonathan and Dr Seward suddenly no longer believing in vampires and committing Mina). Mina, who risked her life and soul to save her husband and help him defeat Dracula, who travelled across the continent to some remote ungodly backwoods savage land and married him in his weakest moment in a church to which neither of them belonged, suddenly forgets her prior fidelity and takes a lover who, of course, looks exactly like the Count but no one else notices for some reason that's never made clear.

The whole story can function in the "real world," relying only on memories of vampires etc, and would have been fine that way, but the last fifty pages or so the writer seemed to remember that she was supposed to be writing a vampire story, and threw some in at the last moment. Apparently when Van Helsing killed the vampire women, they didn't really die, and one has left her journal for Mina to find and take back to civilization. It turns out she is some young countess that disappeared a hundred years ago and is in her journal not a villain but in live action she's still a vampire, still damned. A little incongruity, but by the last fifty pages, you're kind of used to that. The second vampire woman is Dracula's dotty sister, friendly and mentally ill, and the third is some kind of satanic priestess that wants to re-corporate Dracula into Mina's lover's body. Yeah. And he apparently, despite what he knows about the creatures being miserable and damned and murderers, develops a fascination (again in the last fifty pages or so) and decides he's going to promise Vamp #1 all his earthly wealth and sexual prowess in return for eternal life, then changes his mind when he realizes that means being exsanguinated and murdered, and used as a puppet for Dracula's discorporated spirit to control.

Mina apparently develops some religion and becomes, for the moment, some sort of vessel for Eastern Orthodox blessing and when the lover/Dracula tries to take her blood, her inherent holiness (hm) poisons him/them/it/whatever and they die. It's odd that this adulteress and liar can simultaneously be so spiritually pure all of a sudden that her holy blood is poison to these creatures. It was a really weak use of a martyr figure, without the martyrdom.

A lot of the book tried to establish Mina as a feminist heroine (groan) unshackling herself from the restraints of Victorian society life and the influence of the men in her life, all of whom go from heroic in Stoker's book, to totally spineless now. I hate the whole "liberated woman" agenda, especially when it's a heavy-handed wallop that weakens an already ailing story. Not only that but there's a lot of space dedicated to what Mina and her new lady friend are doing when the story is not moving along, and I don't care, because--it doesn't move the story along! Hey, it's great she does stuff in her spare time, between worrying about vampires and boffing Dracula impersonators, but it's filler, wasted space, could've been used to establish a plot.

Mediocre at best. I finished it. It was a good cheap read, if all you're looking for is something quick and not serious, not a big commitment at all, and you don't mind inconsistent character development, blatant agendas, and vampire-genre cliches.

My copy of this book is 342 pages, and I took my time to read it. I think the author, Marie Kiraly, skillfully and artistically creates a world and main characters that are vivid. I found it easy to visualize the people and surroundings, and the story does have palpable atmosphere. However, due to the length of it, some segments of the story felt tedious to me, and they were laborious to get through. For anyone who has yet to read this, I'm making an effort to not reveal too many details and ruin elements of surprise, but I was disappointed by how some events were not convincingly explained, specifically nearer to the end. It is as if several scenes were simplified, and at least a few "minor" characters were so one-dimensional that I, as a reader, unfortunately simply thought their behavior and motivations were illogical. Also, the story strongly focuses on Mina's internal world, especially the entries she makes in her journal, so a potential drawback to such a style is that a "typical" male would have NO interest in this book (like the "Twilight" series), except perhaps for the sexually explicit scenes. I've read other Amazon reviews of this book criticizing those scenes, but I did not find them offensive, nor pornographic. Yes, they are graphic, but I never thought them crude or vulgar. I've also read criticism about the cover art by Tony Mauro, but I think it's beautifully and sensuously done. Tony Mauro has gorgeous artwork in other books and calendars, to name a few.
In summary, there is impressive ambiance, and often illustrative writing, in this story, but I was dissatisfied especially with the ending, which hit me in the face like a mediocre finale. It was very anti-climactic!

Yet another example of never judge a book by its cover (or the cover synopsis). 'Mina' looked very promising and yet failed to deliver on practically every level.

I will not give major spoilers in this review but nothing of even moderate interest occurs until around page 200 or so and from there it is ho-hum with a couple of rather boring sexual encounters for the main character, a bit of travel and the required realization that a Victorian woman could never have a passionate relationship with the man she actually married....that the ending was a bit of a cop out on the author's part was merely the holy water on this staked corpse of a story.

If you like tepid lovescenes, lukewarm plots and bland characters from a period romance type novel masquerading as the sequel to Bram Stoker's classic then by all means read 'Mina'....just don't buy it. Save your money for a good paranormal fantasy by Patricia Briggs or Carrie Vaughn, you'll enjoy them much more.