Dracula of Transylvania
by Ricardo Delgado
A Review

“He was dark majesty.”

An ambitious retelling of the beloved Dracula by Dram Stoker filled with strange and terrifying illustrations!

“You look upon history itself.”

Perfect for fans of the genre, especially those that love the rich lore of Dracula and want an expansive story that reads like a historical text with informative foot notes galore and filled with Latin, Romanian and Arabic.

“And you three filthy women of pleasure will leave this plane of existence with dry, barren, childless wombs.”

Likes:

The Brides. This retelling added a voice and layers of complexity to Venus, Petra and Andromeda, the ‘brides of Dracula’.

The Illustrations. Perfectly dark and violent! I can just imagine how lush they’d be in a hardback!

The Coda, in Amsterdam, at the end! The banter was extremely well done!

Dislikes:

The author used internet searches and translation engines to translate bits of dialogue to the various languages used in this book as opposed to real people from the cultures depicted.

All in all, this was a lush, beguiling tale that’s not for everyone, but is definitely a stunning retelling!

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion!

For the fans of Bram Stoker's Dracula- read this if you enjoy reading Fanfiction & have an acceptance level high enough to let someone meddle with your favourite classic.
Split between the timeliness of Ancient & Modern World
An illustrated book to keep you in gaged all through... give goosebumps here n there.

Though it's mentioned as a Graphic novel - wanted to give you an alert that it's not! just illustrated - not graphic

Recommend for spooky reads

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an eARC of this in exchange for an honest review.

This book, as you can most likely tell, is a Dracula retelling.

Unfortunately, this was a DNF for me. Right off the bat, the formatting of this text was not reader friendly. In order to read correctly, you had to keep zooming in and out and scrolling as opposed to just swiping to the next page. I was also expecting this to be a graphic novel, but it is more of a novel with some illustrations at the beginning of chapters/parts. The illustrations were a nice touch, but not really my style. All the illustrations are in black and white. There were a lot of quotes from the bible and long Greek and Latin monologues followed immediately by the translations. I feel that was a waste, either quote in the native language or use the translation, but not both.

Since I am not the target audience for this, I feel unfair rating it positively or negatively,which is why my rating will be a 3. I think people who are very interested in Dracula lore and how it would have played a part throughout history would like this. If you are someone who would like to know how Dracula would havrle affected other countries and continents, you might also enjoy this.

I appreciate having had an opportunity to read and review this book. The appeal of this particular book was not evident to me, and if I cannot file a generally positive review I prefer simply to advise the publisher to that effect and file no review at all.

DNF

This book should not be considered a graphic novel. It is a novel with illustrations throughout. This was an extremely slow and long read that I just couldn't get into. I enjoyed the sequence of the story and how it was broken up, but overall the formatting of the book is awful.

A spooky Halloween read! A chilling thrill of a ride with an interesting take on the legend of Vlad Dracul.

This was a DNF

For genre it said it was a graphic novel this was not a graphic novel it was now with a few illustrations.

There was a huge chunks of dialogue in Latin and Ancient Greek and then translated in English which was a waste of space.

I wanted to read something that was a graphic novel version of the original Dracula story which this was not. I will not recommend us to anyone

This is not a graphic novel.

I'm shocked when I opened it, the letters are too small to read. I'm disappointed. The format is a no for me.

Whether Dracula needed to be expanded across more continents is up for debate, but this book does have an awe-inspiring scope and concept.

Sadly, I ended up DNFing this book quickly as I could tell that I didn’t connect to the writing style. The premise sounds interesting but I think this book is miss classified as it’s more of a novel with illustrations but not a graphic novel. Also the formatting of this book for NetGalley made it had to read as I had to keep messing with the zoom to try and read it properly.

dnf

Yes hi another dnf. Excuse me for not starting with a synopsis, this is a retelling of Dracula and since any reader probably is a member of GR, a page for readers, I am sure you have at least heard about the original novel, so I won't bother.

This one starts with a few lines from the bible and then goes on to Ancient Rome, and this is where the problems start. To sum them up, I am not in the target audience. I am studying archaeology and just spend my whole week talking about life in Antiquity, and what I read so far before quitting was not what I want to spend my time on.
Since I really didn't get far I refrain from giving this any stars.

There are huge chunks of monologues in Ancient Greek and Latin, followed by the translations, which feels obnoxious. Great, you've either done the translation yourself or were able to find somebody who did it for you. Either you're impressed by that or you roll your eyes, and if you, like me, belong to the latter category, you probably won't have fun with this.

Additionally, I somehow wound up thinking this would be a graphic novel, which it is not. It has illustration by the author, most of them are black and white. Rather sketchy, as in not very detailled and look like they were drawn in between chapters in a few minutes.

Just let me get back to that I am probably not the target audience. If you want another version of Dracula, with a few pictures thrown in, and don't spend a lot of time with your head stuck in other time periods that touch on this novel, you might have fun with it.
As usual in these cases, I'd urge you to read more reviews on this title to form an opinion.

The arc was provided by the publisher.

Not really a comic here. Maybe miss categorized? I still like the story, it was entertaining but I just felt weird all the way through because i started it expecting something else completely!

DNF

This...was not a graphic novel. I love vampires and I specifically love Dracula but I went into this expecting a graphic novel and I did not get that. This is a novella with pictures.

My review can't really count, because I did not read this title. Netgalley categorized it as a graphic novel so I requested it, but it is not a graphic novel.

It is a 3.5/5 star for me.

This is such an interesting book for any fan of Bram Stocker's Dracula. Indeed the historical sequence of the novel is very informative. Also, as an Academia, I have enjoyed the footnotes

Yet, my issue is that Arabic does not come out as consistent words but as letters; maybe it is a problem with the Netgalley's reader, but as a bilingual reader, I wished to see Arabic written well as the other languages.

Overall, it is wonderfully, written. Thank you for allowing me to review this book.

dnf-ed.

this was marked as a "graphic novel" so i was expecting just that. unfortunately, this is a novel and a long one, to be honest. i was interested in this because i thought it will be a comic about dracula, so i have dnf-ed it after reading a bit. the writing was good, but the formatting was awful.