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An Old Friend of the Family (The Dracula Series, 3) Paperback – January 24, 2006
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The Southerland family left the old world to start anew in America, but little did they know that a blood-feud, older than history itself, would follow them through the generations to come.
Kate Southerland, the first born of the latest generation of Southerlands, has been murdered, but she is not dead. Her little brother, Johnny, has also vanished, a severed, bloody finger the only clue.
But the Southerlands have no clue what they've fallen into. Their enemy is no mortal madman, but the undying mistress of evil enchantment, Morgan Le Fay, and the Southerlands are not her true target. She seeks to do battle with their protector, their defender, the only man who is capable of saving this mortal family from a war they've never realized was waged.
- Print length208 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateJanuary 24, 2006
- Dimensions5.5 x 0.48 x 8.5 inches
- ISBN-100765314983
- ISBN-13978-0765314987
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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
An Old Friend of the Family
By Saberhagen, FredTor Books
Copyright © 2006 Saberhagen, FredAll right reserved.
ISBN: 9780765314987
One
It looked like the North Atlantic raging at the Devon coast, Kate told herself, recalling a childhood trip to Europe, and the enduring memory of the ocean pounding at those rough English rocks. Now, under the glare of the close-ranked floodlights along the Outer Drive, she saw the black lake reach a fist in past the wintry void, where summer knew a strip of sunwhite beach. Above the ice-draped slats of snowfence the fist shook spume at city and civilization, then crashed down, dissolving itself in an open-handed splash that washed across six of the eight lanes of forty- mile-per-hour traffic. The traffic wavered, minimally slowing, some of it skidding perilously in the freezing wet. If things kept on this way, the police were going to have to close the Drive.
Twenty or thirty yards inland, on pavement separated from the Drive and the reaching waves by a wide divider strip of frozen parkland, Kate’s Lancia purred sedately south. Most of her attention was concentrated upon the task of reading addresses from the endless row of tall apartment building fronting on Drive and park and lake. The particular numbers she had been looking for now suddenly appeared, elegantly backlighted against a towering granite wall. She slowed and turned. The righthand curve of driveway went down to a basement garage, but she stayed with the left branch, rolled past two parked Cadillacs and a Porsche, and pulled up under the building’s entrance canopy.
Despite the heatlamps fighting down against the wind and cold, the uniformed doorman wore earmuffs above the collar of his winter jacket. His eyeglasses were so thick as to resemble frosted protective goggles of some sort. Taller than he, Kate swept in through the door that he held open for her, meanwhile pulling back the hood of her warm blue jacket from natural blond curls.
“I’d like to see Craig Walworth. Tell him Kate Southerland is here,” she told the man when he had followed her into the lobby. A few moments later, after the intercom had brought down Craig’s acceptance of her visit, she was alone in a small elevator.
If Joe were with her now, he’d be worrying about what the doorman was going to do with the car—or about something else, about anything, maybe just about dropping in on a party unannounced. But then if Joe were with her tonight, she wouldn’t be coming here at all. Which, of course, was really the whole point. She hadn’t made any commitment to Joe—not yet. If and when she did, things, would be different.
And how they would.
Maybe the real point was the fact that she felt compelled to make the point. If she was so certain of her present freedom, why was she here trying to prove something to herself? She could have gone Christmas shopping instead. And she probably should have. For one thing she still faced the problem of a gift for Joe, who was certain to spend too much of his money buying one for her…
The elevator, having gone as high as it could go, eased almost imperceptibly to a stop and let Kate out into a small marble lobby from which two massive doors of handcarved black wood, one at each end, led to two apartments. A small decorative table, ivory-colored to contrast with the doors, stood in the middle of the lobby facing the two elevators. On the wall just above the table there hung a picture, or perhaps it was a mirror, of which only an edge of antique gilt frame was visible. Someone had draped an old, worn-looking raincoat over it, perhaps thinking that the loser of the garment would be sure to see it there if he came back. He’d need something warmer than that if he came back tonight.
The right hand door stood slightly ajar, and through this opening came sounds of subdued partying: music, an alto laugh, a glassy clink, and voices murmuring. Kate pushed the thick door fully open and slowly walked on in. She stood in a brick-floored vestibule, from which two interior hallways led off at right angles to each other. A third wall was taken up by a great guest closet, open now to show a modest miscellany of coasts and scarves, some fallen from their hangers. It didn’t seem that any very large party was going on.
“Hi” The greeting was conspiratorially low. Simultaneously a black-haired, black-bearded head bobbed into Kate’s view from two rooms down the hallway to her right. Craig Walworth was three or four years older than her twenty. No more than an inch taller, but so wide across the chest that he looked larger than he was. Often, as now, his shirt was worn halfway open down the front to display some hair and muscle; and he tended to have his large hands planted on his hips—one of them was there now, the other holding a drink —so that standing near him put you at some risk from jutting elbows. “Glad you could make it, Kate. I was starting to think you were really out of circulation.” The drink he had been holding somehow already stashed away, he took her jacket as she slipped it off, and with a toss consigned it to the closet’s minor chaos.
“You put out a standing invitation for Friday nights, Craig. I’m just taking you at your word.”
“I’m just delighted that you are, Sweetie. Our little group here will never be the same—thank God.” Craig’s voice was still low, uncharacteristically near the whispering level, and now he glanced about, a man checking to see if he might be overheard. “Now listen, Doll, there’s a little house rule I’ve got to mention before you join the group.”
“Rules? That’s not quite what I would have expected at your parties.”
“Well, you see, it’s not your basic expectable kind of rule.” As they talked, he had started her moving down the hall toward the still rather muffled sounds of partying, with an arm round her waist that she somehow minded more than the expected cheek-kiss following. “The thing is, everyone—expect me, of course—takes a new name for the evening, and pretends to be someone other than they are. You should be…how do you like Sabrina? Sabrina Something and I'll; say that you’re an old friend of mine from Canada. How’s that?”
“Well, I did think of becoming Sabrina once, believe it or not. When I was about thirteen years old.”
They had now come to a room where four or five people were gathered, all standing, as if none of them had been here very long. Kate so rarely remembered names the first time round that sometimes she was tempted to give up trying; and since these were supposedly all aliases anyway, she made no effort to retain anything from the round of introductions.
Beside Kate stood a tall girl wearing an odd shawl who wanted to find out how much Kate knew about Tarot cards. When she heard the answer was nothing at all, she wanted to explain them at great length. Kate tried for a little while to make sense of it, and then, as the group shifted, took the first opportunity to move away. She was offered a drink, declined then thought that the next time she would accept. In the background she could hear a heavy door, probably the front door of the apartment, being firmly closed. Craig had excused himself, and was somewhere around a corner, talking on the phone.
“Try a joint?” This from a stocky young man with thick glasses who had not been in the group the first time round—no doubt there might be other people she had not met, in other rooms; it must be a huge apartment. The man making the offer got too close, and stared at Kate intensely. Being given a man’s full attention is a thrilling experience for a woman—well, sometimes. Hadn’t she seen him somewhere else recently? But she had no intention of asking that aloud.
Kate puffed twice and put the thing down. As expected, she felt nothing from it just at first. The first few times that she had tried, in school, nothing at all had happened to her. The few times after that had always resulted in a pleasant high, with slow onset and letdown. She wouldn't be surprised if it was nothing at all again tonight; quite likely she was just too keyed up, too nervous, though why she should be…
“…play games in a little while, you know, identities and such.” Craig was back at her side, finishing a statement whose beginning Kate had somehow missed. “And someone else is coming, Sabrina, someone I want you to meet. I’ve mentioned you to him, and he’s very interested.”
Oh? My Canadian background?”
Craig’s eyes were sparkling with some inner amusement under their dark brows. But now his attention was forced away by someone else, a blondish boy with a loud mouth, who had some interminable anecdote to tell him, as one insider to another. Craig responded with off-hand but deliberate insults, which the loud one laughed at foolishly.
Kate almost tripped over the tall girl, then sat down beside her on the thick, burgundy-colored carpet. “What sort of games is he talking about?” Kate asked. The girl said something Kate couldn’t catch. Very loud music was starting in the next room. The Pointer Sisters?
Upon the wall that Kate was facing there hung an Escher print, the circle of lizards crawling up out of the flat surface of the drawing-within-the-drawing, crawling up and around an improvised ramp of books and geometric solids, to ease themselves at last down into the flat again, where in three shades of gray their bodies formed a tessellated pattern. Kate willed for a moment to lose herself in the intricacies of the plan, but her mind was too restless.
She looked around abruptly, with the feeling that someone, on one she knew, had just called her real name: a loud, rude calling in a strange man’s voice. But no one else seemed to have noticed it at all. And the voice seemed to have come, now that she thought about it, directly into her mind, not through her ears. Dear Kate, she warned herself, neither you Sabrina had better smoke any more tonight.
Restlessness pulled her to her feet. A bar-on-a- cart offered bottles and glasses and ice. Shouldn’t mix with the other stuff, but just a taste was not going to do her any harm. In her hand a glass half-filled with white wine she wandered, mocking a slinky tall-model walk, up to a window of very solid, unopenable glass that looked out far above the endless chains of headlights and taillights of the drive. Beyond the few additional streetlamps that were scattered through the park, the lake stretched out to the edge of everything, a vast black invisibility like death.
One of the nameless boys she had just met came to the window too, ice cubes tinkling in his glass like Christmas music. God the shopping she had yet to do. What was she here for, anyway? Trying to prove a point to Joe, who didn’t know where she was, and who, when she told him, would fail to get the—
Her name again, but still unspoken.
Looking down a vista of the apartment’s archways, Kate saw a huge, dark-haired man standing gazing toward her. An early Orson Welles, but harder-faced, in a brown coat made of those rich fake-furs, like her own blue. Or maybe in his case the fur was real. He was standing there as if he had just arrived, though if her sense of the place was right, he was nowhere near the front entrance.
With a vague feeling that it was important, necessary for her to do so, Kate turned from the window and walked toward the newcomer. No one else seemed to be paying either of them the least attention. The Pointer Sisters grew louder still, then faded abruptly as a door somewhere behind Kate was closed. She was alone with the huge man in the hallway—no, not quite alone From the corner of her eye Kate saw Craig walk out of another doorway to her left. Craig fell into step beside her as she walked the last few strides toward the big man who stood waiting.
They stopped. Craig put his hands on his hips, then at once let them slide off to hang fidgeting at his sides. “Enoch Winter,” he said, almost whispering again, “this is Kathryn Southerland.”
The huge man said something (what?) to her in and offhand sort of greeting, and she replied. He was really massive, and Kate was reminded of when she had met an All-American defensive end: perfect proportions, but blown up larger than real life seemed to have the right to be.
Enoch Winter’s dark hair was slightly curly, and worn shorter than that of most young men. There were only the beginnings of lines in his face. Still, at second glance Kate would not have called him young if she had had to set down a description. His eyes were gray-blue, his broad, pale cheeks a little blue with what would be heavy stubble in a few hours if he let it grow. He was smiling confidently at Kate, and all but ignoring Craig. He spoke to her again; once more she somehow could not grasp what he had said.
There was a brief distraction as the short young man with thick eyeglasses appeared from somewhere to stand at Kate’s right, looking on in silence. The four of them in the hallway were closed off now by doors on every side. Beyond the closed doors, the sounds of the party went on.
Enoch Winter spoke, and Kate stared at him, straining to understand. His voice was loud enough. And she had thought the pot would not take hold of her tonight. She shouldn’t even have tasted the wine.
He chuckled, perhaps at something he had just said himself. He didn’t seem to notice that she could not comprehend what he was saying. Or else he did not care. With a faint inward start Kate realized that Craig and Thick-glasses were no longer at her sides. They had gone away somewhere, leaving her standing in the shut-off hall with Enoch Winter, who talked and talked, to her alone. She must not ever let her attention waver form him for a moment, must not…
His whitish hand, raised, was so big that the great dark stone that rode one finger in a silver ring seemed not only modest but scarcely adequate. Just past his waving hand Kate’s eye caught sight of a phone on a hall table, and it came to her with desperate force that there was something she must do at once.
“Excuse me a moment,” she broke in clearly. “I’ve got to call home right away.”
“…hafta do that for?” His accent was midwestern, vaguely rural. All of a sudden he wasn’t happy any more.
“I have to. That’s all.” Walking to the phone was the most utterly wearying thing that Kate had ever done. She managed to do it, though.
“…careful whatcha say. All right.” Enoch’s voice had regained some of its good humor, and now good-humoredly he fell silent.
Kate punched at buttons. She could hear the phone at home start ringing, and then a familiar voice.
“Hello, Gran. I just wanted to tell you…”
What could she say? What was she able to say? “I didn’t do any shopping after all. So I couldn’t get those things you wanted.”
“Well, goodness, dear. Don’t worry about it. You sound upset, are you all right?”
“Fine.”
“Well, I expect I’ll be going out myself tomorrow, I can do my own shopping. Where are you?”
A leaden pause, in which Kate could feel her own mind groping. Crawling. Trying to get free, but leashed. “Downtown,” she got out last. It was almost the truth, the closest thing to truth that she could manage.
“Take care now, Kate, they say the roads are very nasty.”
As she cradled the phone Enoch started talking to her again. In this case it really was flattering to have such concentrated attention form a man, attention of a kind she could not get often enough form Joe.
Somehow or other they now were standing by the guest closet and Enoch was watching while she put on her blue jacket. In some far-off room of the apartment voices were cheering now— probably a game was being played. Craig was here again, though, to see them out in silence. Enoch tossed a—condescending?—wink at Craig, whose own face displayed a vast…well, admiration, as though for something Enoch was doing or had done. Kate puzzled over all this while she walked out to the elevator, her hand on Enoch’s arm.
Going down with Enoch, she thought for the most part about noting at all. While he perhaps was thinking of her, for once or twice he put out his huge, pale hand and brushed her cheek with it, rather as if she were something that he had long coveted and had just allowed himself to buy. She wouldn’t like it if Joe behaved so possessively. But this was different…of course.
The elevator let them out in the subterranean garage, and there was her Lancia, Keys and all. Kate slipped into the driver’s seat, Enoch waiting till he was invited to get in on the right. There was no doorman to be seen, but gates opened ahead of them and out they went, into the clod and up the curving driveway.
Kate drove, without having to think of where to go. As before, Enoch talked, and it seemed to her that she could not understand a word. White needles filled bright globes of air around the streetlights. In some clear corner of Kate’s mind the thought occurred that nothing she had ever smoked before had hit her this way. Once the situation struck her as so ridiculous that she began to laugh, and laughed so hard and so wildly that it was difficult for her to see where she was steering. Enoch spoke sharply to her and she calmed down. Then it was his turn to laugh, loudly and heartily, evidently at something Kate had just tried to say. The trouble was that something in his laughter hurt Kate’s ears, so she wanted to put her fingers into them, but instead she had to go on driving.
They had already turned inland, away from the lake, leaving the Outer drive and the Gold Coast behind. Was this Diversey she was following now? She wasn’t sure. Probably they were farther south. Presently she turned again, going where she had to go. Here the street lamps were fewer, and gave a different light, wan and wintry. It was surprising how in the city the neighborhoods could change form one block to the next.
Now here was where they were to stop. Certainly no doorman here, in fact not even a break in the row of dull vehicles parked along the frozen curb. Near the end of the block a fireplug-space at least was open, and Kate halted just ahead of it and started to back in.
A car just behind them turned into the same space headfirst, jounced to halt there just as Kate also hit her brakes. At the moment both vehicles had a tirehold on the precious space, but neither could occupy it.
She turned to Enoch helplessly. There was an abstracted expression on his face; he opened his door and got out. His head vanished form Kate’s view, but form the attitude of his body it was plain that he was facing back into the glare of their challenger’s headlights. Cold air swirled in through the open door to paw Kate’s legs. An backing away. Enoch slid in beside her again and closed the door, the look on his face unchanged.
Kate parked the car—must have parked it, though the next thing she was aware of was walking along the cracked and narrow sidewalk beside Enoch, whose arm encircled her but brought no warmth. The footing was treacherous, half uneven pavement, half blackened ice in old refrozen mounds, all under a powdering on new snow. When had she ever felt cold so intense before?
They passed beneath an ancient neon sign humming to itself and sizzling with unplanned flashes. A man went by them, his face as hard and his clothes as grimy as the street itself. Suddenly there were two wooden steps, a narrow door that yielded to Enoch’s shoulder, and now at least the wind was gone.
The cold kept pace, though, as they walked up stairs, bare wood creaking underfoot beneath the gritty crunching of a layer of grime. It would be terrible to have to face a night like this alone, but she would not, no, she would not. She clung hard now to Enoch’s arm.
He used a key, then brought her through a door into a room of utter cold, a wretchedly furnished room, dark but for pale streetlight coming in through an undraped window. Kate saw smeared glass, one broken pane with rags stuffed into it.
“You’ll have to hold me,” she whispered, shivering violently. “I’m here and I can’t help myself, you know. At least hold me so I won’t be so cold.”
He laughed. When he spoke now she could hear him plainly. “Oh, I’ll hold you, okay. You’ll get to like it here. Think of it as home, maybe, even. Wise little rich-bitch.” He had closed the door and was standing right in front of her. “You think you know just what is gonna happen now. But you don’t know at all, at all.”
Then he seemed to descend upon her like a great slow wave from the black lake.
Copyright © 1979 by Fred Saberhagen
Continues...
Excerpted from An Old Friend of the Family by Saberhagen, Fred Copyright © 2006 by Saberhagen, Fred. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Product details
- Publisher : Tor Books (January 24, 2006)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 208 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0765314983
- ISBN-13 : 978-0765314987
- Item Weight : 6.7 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.48 x 8.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,833,224 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #946 in Vampire Horror
- #20,495 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction
- #42,183 in Paranormal & Urban Fantasy (Books)
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About the author
Fred Saberhagen (1930-2007) is widely published in many areas of speculative fiction. He is best known for his Berserker, Swords, and Dracula series. Less known are the myth-based fantasies Books of the Gods. Fred also authored a number of non-series fantasy and science fiction novels and a great number of short stories. For more information on Fred, visit his website: www.fredsaberhagen.com.
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His first book in the series begins with the novel The Dracula Tape which is a very tongue in cheek re-telling of the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker but from Dracula's point of view. Some of his justifications for the events are somewhat... questionable, such as his claim that what happened on the Demeter was the result of the first mate going insane because he thought a vampire was on board. Okay, so the first mate went insane and caused everything but... the cause of his insanity was true... there was a vampire on board... Then there's his claim that his relationship with Lucy was casual and consensual. But in the next breath he admits she thought it was all a dream. So, yes. Our narrator is not exactly honest and sometimes you have to read between the lines to catch the truth. He leaves out the details he doesn't like, apparently lies, and slants things to the way he wants to remember them. But for all his flaws you start to like Saberhagen's Dracula. He's no Edward Cullen. He doesn't lament being a vampire. He's proud of what he is and has a very strong, personal sense of honor. It also has a very satisfying ending for those who love the idea of Mina and Dracula as a couple, without actually re-writing the ending of Stoker's novel.
The one thing I dislike is that Dracula's only real vulnerability in these books is wood. The reasoning given is that like a vampire wood is something that was once alive and transformed into something new.
The second book in the series is called The Dracula - Holmes file. This story starts with Dracula roaming Victorian London, shortly after the events of Dracula. He accidentally gets involved in a very disturbing case with Sherlock Holmes, who actually resembles Dracula, himself.
The Third book in the series called Old Friend of the Family, serves as a sort of glue linking the literary Dracula to the modern world through his connection to Mina's family. In this novel Mina's descendants are desperate for aide when young Johnny Southerland (the youngest of her line at this point) is kidnapped and his pinky fingers have been viciously torn off. The family, in desperation, use a spell left by "Grandma Mina" to summon help, at which point Dracula (under the alias Dr. Corday) turns up and becomes self-appointed guardian of Mina's family. And it becomes strangely satisfying when Dracula takes brutal revenge for what was done to poor Johnny. He even brutally mangles one of the kidnappers. You find yourself starting to root for him, despite his viciousness. He is a fantastic anti-hero.
This book also introduces us to Joseph Koegh, who marries into the Southerland family (descendants of Mina and Jonathan Harker). Joe becomes a private investigator and recurring character in the series and he serves as a good counter balance to our not-always-nice narrator.
The fourth book of the series is Thorn. In this book Dracula is attempting to win (at auction) a painting of his own "deceased" second wife from his mortal life only to find himself involved in a strange mystery that may involve his own half-vampire wife from his mortal life. The quality of the book series starts to slide a little bit here and the story alternates between the modern setting and the past. It actually has the feel of an episode of Forever Knight (The Canadian Vampire TV series from the early nineties). The best part of this book has to be Dracula's temper tantrum near the end of the book where Mina herself (now a vampire) shows up to warn one of the main protagonists not to go near him until it was over because of how dangerous he could be when angry. It was disturbing and amusing all at once. But considering what happened to lead to the tantrum it was completely understandable. Dracula and his lover were both blown up in a car. He survived by turning into mist and narrowly escaping. The woman was badly mangled to the point that she couldn't even ingest Dracula's blood to be transformed into a vampire and so she died in agony in his arms... which lead to a monstrous, probably warrented, vampire temper tantrum from Dracula.
The fifth book in the series is probably my least favorite. This one is called Dominion and deals with magick and Merlin himself (who has been wandering the streets under a curse that has left him an incompetent drunk...) Fred Saberhagen is not very good at describing magick. It's disjointed, hallucinogenic and a little incoherent. Fred Saberhagen can describe vampire powers fairly well but not generic magick or time travel very well. The best part though has to be when Dracula is tossed up into a whirlwind that tumbles him around through time, by an angry Merlin, who doesn't realize Dracula is actually on his side.
The sixth book in the series is a good one. This one is called A Matter of Taste. In this book it's revealed that the historical rogue Ceasar Borgia became a vampire and now wants revenge on Dracula (for something our narrator claims was accidental but that's debatable considering our narrator isn't very honest...) Dracula ends up poisoned and now it's up to Mina's human descendants to protect him while he is vulnerable. Meanwhile the now adult Johnny Southerland (the one Dracula saved in Old Friend of The Family) has to find a way to explain to his future wife that his "Uncle Matt" is not only a vampire but THE Dracula. The ending is surprisingly endearing and sweet.
In this book we learn that Dracula has a clever way of compensating for not having a reflection. He has replaced his bathroom mirror with a flat screened closed circuit television with a continual live feed of whatever is in front of it.
The seventh book of the series is one of the two I don't care much for. The other is Dominion. In this one, called A Question of Time, a lot of time travel happens and as I discussed before, Fred Saberhagen is not very good at writing magick or time travel. This particular book has no real impact on the majority of the series and I don't feel it was necessary in the grand scheme of things.
The eighth book of the series is called Seance for a vampire. And yet again our "Hero" makes some questionable decisions, such as wanting to seduce a young Medium whose brother has just been killed, But he was "considerate enough" to wait a night or so after the brother's death to seduce her. This was a fairly interesting one but the one thing about the book I don't care for is Fred Saberhagen sometimes puts his own opinion into the character. For example he has Dracula feel that all Mediums are frauds. He does not believe in ghosts. He believes in magick, time travel, spells, wizards, vampires, werewolves, and even karma but ghosts is the thing Dracula doesn't believe in? I don't buy it. It just doesn't make sense to me. This book deals with the historical Rasputin and is another cross over with Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.
The ninth book of the series is A Sharpness on the Neck and here Fred Saberhagen seems to poke fun of himself a bit, poking fun of how "Mr. Graves" (Another alias for Dracula) shifts from third person perspective to first person perspective. And it also pokes fun at how boring and long winded he can be when explaining things to people. In this story we learn that Radu (Dracula's vampire brother) wants a man named Phillip Radcliffe dead as revenge against his ancestor. It's up to Dracula and a masked band of helpers (Mna's human descendants) to save them.
The story alternates with the past, particularly The French revolution, and the present day. There are subtle nods to A Tale of Two Cities and The Scarlet Pimpernel. At one point Dracula disguises himself as an executioner (and actually carries out several executions) to save a man he is honor-bound to protect.
The funniest part of this book is when Dracula makes a three to five hour long video tape of himself sitting at a desk explaining the back story and the people who are being made to watch the video find it boring and even try fast forwarding it. At one point he even enthralls them to watch it and they still fall asleep about five minutes into it.
Little things are there to remind you of the viciousness of our protagonist. Even though he goes out of his way to try to rescue a little girl at one point, he still mangles a group of vampires who side with his brother Radu, thralls animals to remain still so a little boy can kill them with his mini guillotine, and carries out executions he doesn't even really agree with. He also mentions beating his brother with a wooden cane and tells us that his brother only cried out in pain to "annoy" him. He is... still... Dracula.
The Tenth book in the series is called A coldness in the blood and deals with a self-proclaimed Egyptian deity and a quest to find the Philosopher's Stone. A serious and not-quite resolved strain is put on "Uncle Mathew" (Dracula) and his relationship with Mina's human family (who he's been more or less stalking ever since the book Old Friend of the Family, set twenty years earlier...) The strain comes when Andy (Joe's son) goes to Uncle Matt's apartment to put together a website for him. While there he gets unintentionally wrapped up into the chaotic adventure which subsequently leads to Andy's mother forbidding him from ever helping Uncle Matt with his computer and or going to his apartment again. I can't help but feel sorry for Dracula here because he's clearly grown attached to these people that he has made himself protector of and it's apparent they're all still quite afraid of him. Well, I suppose I'd be a little nervous too if Dracula decided to become my guardian Angel but I've grown to like the guy.
Dracula has been trying very hard to get others to adopt the term Hmo-dirus or Homo-sapien-dirus as a subspecies title for Vampire or as he says Nosferatu. ...It doesn't seem to catch on.
The one thing I dislike about this novel is yet again, like with ghosts in Seance for a vampire, Fred Saberhagen puts his own views in Dracula and it doesn't make much sense that a man from fifteenth century Romania would have issues with a young man having an earring and yet he does. And the author goes out of his way to have multiple characters unrealistically hate the earring, including even a very young character named Dolly. Since when does Dracula have a 1950s middle America mind-set about Jewelry? It doesn't fit.
In any event it's obvious here that this was not meant to be the last book of the series. And it's disappointing to know the book series never truly will be completed since the author passed away.
There are two short stories set in the world of The Dracula Sequence but I haven't had the chance to read those yet.
For anyone who misses vampires who could be terrifying and charming, charismatic yet violent, and not sparkly, I strongly, strongly recommend these books. I think this book series is highly under-rated and Fred Saberhagen's version of Dracula has become one of my favorite literary characters.
The books are all told from Dracula's point of view. The book series inspired certain aspects of the Gary Oldman Dracula movie. And it's really, really under-rated.
The Dracula Tape - Which retells Dracula from Dracula's point of view.
The Holmes-Dracula File - A cross over with Sherlock Holmes.
An Old Friend of the Family - Mina's descendants are forced to summon Dracula for help.
Thorn - Every other chapter deals with Dracula's mortal second wife.
Dominion - A cross over with King Arthur. (I'm not a fan of this one.)
From the Tree of Time - A short story available in the book Gaslight Arcanum. This is another Sherlock cross over.
A Matter of Taste - This one deals with Dracula and The Borgias and what happened the night Dracula became a vampire.
A Question of Time - An odd time travel one. (I didn't care for this one.)
Seance for a Vampire - Another Sherlock cross over.
A Sharpness on the Neck - Deals with Dracula's brother Radu returned as a vampire.
Box Number Fifty - A short story (and a really good one at that) in the book Dracula in London.
A Coldness in the Blood - Sadly the last book in the series and deals with the philosopher's stone. Fred Saberhagen died before he could write another after this.
Note: also read the Homes, Dracula File by the same author. Its bloody good but not in a gruesome way.
Top reviews from other countries
An Old Friend of the Family is the third published book in the series, though like the others it is written as a stand-alone novel. In this one the action moves to 1970s America, contemporary with the book’s publication. An innocent family, who turn out to be descendants of Mina Harker from the first novel and the source Bram Stoker novel, are being viciously persecuted by unknown enemies. Dracula, in the guise if an elderly doctor, travels to the US to help them.
I greatly enjoyed both the previous two entries in the series and was not disappointed by this one. Saberhagen offers the pleasures of a series, shared characters and fictional world, but also adds something new in each book. This one has a modern setting and reads much more like a contemporary horror thriller than the previous two. Dracula remains the same interesting if suitably arrogant figure, but he also takes on to a greater degree the mantle of a dark, outsider hero fighting on our behalf against more hateful monsters than him. I especially enjoyed the closing scenes of the novel where Dracula and two human allies stalk the surviving antagonists through a snowbound Chicago.