Bloodline (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition)

From The Critics

In 1916, Englishman John Shaw is stationed on the front lines of World War I. There is something strange but fascinating about his commanding officer Quincey Harker. After being wounded, John is sent home with fever raging. Mary Seward nurses him back to health and befriends his sister, Lily. Harker, however, arrives and seduces Lily before Mary and John discover that Harker is descended from Dracula, the fiend whom Mary's father helped to destroy years ago. Mary and John set out for Romania following Harker and Lily, hoping to catch them before they wed. In the dark, crumbling Castle Dracula, John and Lily discover horrible secrets about their lineage, and Harker wrestles with his father's sinister plan to reassert the family's control over the countryside. Reverses beset them all, and Mary finally must fight her way alone out of a castle full of vampires. Told in journal entries and letters like Stoker's Dracula, to which this book is a direct sequel, Cary's gothic romance starts slowly. Bloody scenes of war and slightly spooky incidents involving Harker on the battlefront give way to some marginally soppy romance moments before the action finally kicks in. Mary, Lily, John, and Harker share the telling of their story with little differentiation among their voices but a lot of fevered recording of events after catastrophic things have occurred. John Shaw's 180-degree character shift near the novel's end is wholly unbelievable. Those who have read Stoker's book and enjoyed it might find this one interesting. Teens will likely think that Alan Moore handled Stoker's Mina better in his League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (America's Best Comics, 2003), and Elaine Bergstrom's Mina (Ace, 1994),although only for older teens, is a better sequel. VOYA CODES: 3Q 2P S (Readable without serious defects; For the YA with a special interest in the subject; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12). 2005, Razorbill/Penguin Putnam, 336p., Ages 15 to 18.
—Timothy Capehart