Subject: Newman: Anno-Dracula

From: [email-masked] (Dani Zweig)
Date: Mon, 2 May 1994 17:46:21 GMT

Kim Newman's "Anno-Dracula" is alternate fantasy-history fantasy:  In
Newman's world, Van Helsing and company botched their efforts against
Dracula.  Now (1888) Dracula is the Prince Consort, having persuaded Queen
Victoria to accept youth and immortality (by becoming a vampire) and his
hand in marriage.  Vampirism has become respectable in England.  Indeed,
as more and more vampires take over key positions, vampirism becomes the
key to advancement, and more and more of the living seek it out.

This brings an attendent set of problems.  The living are becoming
increasingly restive as their freedoms, livelihoods, and circulatory
systems come under attack.  The newly undead aren't doing much better:
The life of the new vampire tends to be squalid and unsafe.  A wealthy and
cautious vampire may ease into his new life, for instance, but a gin-soaked 
prostitute with a poor life-expectancy, upon turning into a vampire,
becomes a gin-soaked undead prostitute with a poor life-expectancy.

Then the Ripper begins to strike, surgically murdering vampire call-girls.
The murders start out as a matter for the police, but as they continue,
they catalyze the growing vampire/living tensions, provoking everything
from rioting in the streets to armed insurrection.

Among those brought into the case are two unofficial participants.
Genevieve Diedonne has been a vampire longer than Dracula, and is
currently doing charity work in Whitechapel.  Charles Beauregard is an
agent of the Diogenes Club, a semi-secret society that looks out for what
it considers to be Britain's best interests.  They are the main viewpoint
characters through whom we see England in the throes of its change and
growing unrest.  

This view of an altered England is the 'point' of the book, more than the
subplot of catching one serial killer.  It's an enjoyable book, with
enough story to keep the pages turning, and enough vision to make the
turning worth-while.  

What I found weakest about the book (given its unlikely premises,
including Dracula's ability to use his position as Prince Consort to
radically change England so quicly) was Newman's insistance on including
*everone*, historical or fictitious.  Among his vampires, for instance,
are Lestrade, Rupert of Hentzau, Varney the Vampire, and Oscar Wilde.
Mycroft Holmes, Dr. Jekyll, Dr. Moreau, and George Bernard Shaw are still
living.  This sort of thing clearly afforded Newman a good deal of
amusement, but it gets tiresome after a while. 

If this is the sort of book you like, buy it in paperback.

-----
Dani Zweig
[email-masked]

	Who didn't melt down, but whose computer did.