Sunday, April 6, 2008

Barbara Hambly - Renfield, Slave of Dracula

Renfield emerges from the shadows in a terrifying reinvention of Bram Stoker's classic novel...

Renfield, confined to an asylum - obsesses in his diary, pen letters of insane passion to his wife, and still answers his Master's calling.
Ordered to hunt and kill Van Helsing and his friends, Renfield complies, setting the stage for the ultimate battle between good and evil, the living and the dead.
It will take him from the dark crypts of Dracula's castle to the more personal darkness of his own descent into madness, and shocking truth of where it all began.

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Reading Bram Stoker's Dracula from a completely different angle is like experiencing something old completely new, developing a more interesting character like Renfield was described by Bram Stoker. Having played a very small, crazy and mean role in the original novel by Stoker, Hambly gave literally life into Renfield's small creature.

Beginning in Dr. Seward's lunatic asylum Renfield exists between Laudanum, a narcotic, eating flies and spiders. Little does anyone know to bother that he has a connection to what is coming whilst thinking of his beloved wife and daugther all the time. I is dreams he can see what happens to Lucy and Mina.

The story takes a twist when Dracula's three Valkyries take an enraged turn against their master, seeking revenge because he left them in charge of the castle while he himself goes after Mina.

The reader will discover a new, more important Renfield, embedded in an almost unaltered, old storyline. Assigned to kill those that try to safe Mina Harker's life he struggles between being the servant and being what he always has been: a good, caring man and husband.

A good work and a great addition to all Vampire libraries !

Rating:
Visit Barbara Hambly.

Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Berkley; Reprint edition (October 2, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0425217892
ISBN-13: 978-0425217894

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