Like Dracula, this book is written as a series of journal entries and letters from several characters. It starts off with some notes regarding the will of the writer's uncle. He also goes into his entire family tree which I found really hard to follow. I felt like I had to draw it out in order to understand it all, but without a chart, I could only pretend I knew who everyone was. As it turns out, very few of the family members were relevant to the book, so I'm not sure why so much time was put into it.
I did find reading this section a little annoying because this character is such a douchebag. He is from a very wealthy family and they all act like complete ass hats. For example, the guy's father fired one of the servants because she helped out his cousin, who is considered the black sheep of the family. He just couldn't stand such disrespect in his house or something. Luckily, this character is pretty minor, because I don't think I would have gotten through the whole book if he was a more major character. I think his presence is primarily there to contrast with the main character's personality. I'm not sure his presence was really necessary, though.
The beginning of the book starts off very slow. The end of the book is also slow. I enjoyed the middle of the book sufficiently to not be bothered by the slow bits. I must admit, though, that I considered putting it away because the beginning was bordering on too slow. For some people, it may be.
Let's just cut to the meat of the story. The main character, Rupert, travels to the Land of Blue Mountains in accordance with his uncle's will. While there, he lives in a castle which he, and every other character in the book, fails to describe in any detail. They each made it a point to say that they just couldn't describe it, which I found to be a bit of a cop-out.
The region has been known to have a ghostly woman appear in the sea above a coffin. Before long, she finds her way to Rupert's room, soaking wet and only dressed in a funeral shroud. She's freezing cold, and begs Rupert to help her get warm. At dawn, she runs out in a big hurry. She goes on to visit him a few more times, and he becomes infatuated with her. His infatuation isn't even shaken when he finds her laying in a coffin in the crypt of an old church.
During this time, Rupert's aunt, who is also living at the castle, has been having some disturbing visions. She believes that dark powers are trying to influence him. He even thinks that his lady is a vampire, even though her visits seemed innocent enough. This got me questioning what was really happening during her visits. In Dracula, the victims didn't remember his attacks, it isn't much of a stretch to think the some vampire victims would think something else was happening. Was what Rupert wrote even close to reality? I found myself wanting to read a journal entry from his aunt to know more about her visions to gain some insight to what might really be happening. As if that weren't interesting enough, a war was also brewing. I got the impression that this lady was somehow involved with that, too.
Before I go on, I want to address the apparent vampire romance angle this book is seeming to take. Unlike in modern vampire romances, the man is not a vampire. Nor is he some desperate, misunderstood "teenager" full of angst (who is actually a really old pedophile). The vampire isn't portrayed as some romantic ideal. Rupert even acknowledges that his soul may be in danger because of his love. He just doesn't care. In short, all the cheesy cliches of modern vampire romances aren't present in this book.
Now I'm going to move on to spoiler territory.
Darth Vader is Luke's father.
I mean...
E.T. goes home.
Errr....
Kevin Bacon secures the right to dance.
There. That should kill enough space for people to not accidentally see something. Rupert's romance with the vampire-lady results in a midnight wedding. There's a lot of strange ritual in a very dark church. It plays out very similar to a vision his aunt had a while back, where she saw death. That really ratchets up the creepy factor in the story.
Shortly after the wedding, word comes to the castle that the daughter of the country's ruler has been kidnapped. Rupert instantly organizes search parties to rescue her, and even leads a party himself. Along the way, he learns more about the kidnapped women. It turns out, that she is the woman he married. So, she isn't a vampire at all. Before the book had started, she had fallen ill, and appeared to die. She awoke during her funeral (dressed in a funeral shroud, of course). It was decided that she had to appear to be deceased as a service to her country (I didn't actually follow the reason why, but was satisfied with that angle). She was kidnapped so the invaders would eventually have a claim to the land.
During her rescue, the book switches to the point of view of another rescuer. I thought this worked well in creating a tension that I don't normally find in books written in the first person. I found myself wondering if something were going to happen to Rupert during the rescue. He faced numerous dangers, and not just from the kidnappers.
Once that rescue is complete, it is discovered that the woman's father has also been kidnapped. He has been taken to a tower, since it is easily defended with few people. This complicates the rescue, but, fortunately, Rupert has an airplane and can rescue the man in that.
When the airplanes were first mentioned, I felt like the book may have been taking a few liberties with technology, since it takes place in the early 1900s and the first Wright Brothers flight wasn't much earlier, in 1903. From the context, though, I think that the airplanes may have actually been blimps, which were invented in 1880.
After that sequence is when the book slows down a lot with a bunch of politics and diplomacy and remains slow until it finishes. I did find myself wanting some sort of conflict or treachery to appear occur. Sadly, it never did. I didn't find it too hard to get through the ending, though.
All in all, I enjoyed it quite a bit. The slow parts were a bit annoying, but not too bad, when looking at the book as a whole.
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