Renfield: Slave of Dracula

by Barbara Hambly

Overview

“Excellent.”—Library Journal
 
A slave of Dracula emerges from the shadows in a terrifying reinvention of Bram Stoker’s classic novel.
 
Renfield, confined to an asylum, obsesses in his diary, pens letters of insane passion to his wife, and still answers his Master’s calling. Ordered to hunt and kill Van Helsing, 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 the shocking truth of where it all began.
 
“Hambly creates a past for this possessed man via his diaries and letters to his wife. . . . [she] superbly weaves Stoker’s plot and style with her own, producing one of the best recent vampire yarns.”—Booklist

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101206300
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/02/2007
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	1 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Barbara Hambly is the author of Patriot Hearts and The Emancipator’s Wife, a finalist for the Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction. She is also the author of Fever Season, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and the acclaimed historical Benjamin January series, including the novels A Free Man of Color and Sold Down the River. She lives in California.

Editorial Reviews

Like Tim Lucas in The Book of Renfield (2005), Hambly retells Bram Stoker's Dracula from the viewpoint of its most memorable peripheral character, the mad, insect-eating Renfield. His role as the count's human factotum and facilitator complicates a larger story in which Renfield struggles to conceal from conniving relatives and doctors the whereabouts of his beloved wife and daughter. Though Renfield dies at his employer's hands before the end in Stoker's original, Hambly (Circle of the Moon) contrives an imaginative way to prolong his involvement in the story. Unfortunately, the madman's ravings become repetitive, tedious and improbable once certain truths about him are revealed. Though Hambly tries to craft a portrait of Renfield as a tragic victim, his frequent references to Stoker's characters and their adventures only remind the reader that a more interesting vampire adventure is unfolding beyond the borders of Renfield's asylum and the events of this novel. (Sept.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

In Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, Dracula, the enigmatic R.M. Renfield is confined to an asylum and feeds on insects, spiders, and rats while awaiting the arrival of his dreaded master, Count Dracula. Hambly (Circle of the Moon), however, takes a different tact. Through Renfield's notes, disturbing dreams, and passionate letters to his wife, Catherine, readers begin to understand the intelligent but delusional Renfield, who believes that only through animal vitality can he obtain the potent energy needed to meet his master's demands. He is convinced that when he has done all that Dracula commands, he will be freed from the asylum and able to return to Catherine and their daughter, Vixie. All the familiar characters from Stoker's novel are present-Mina Harker; her husband, Jonathan; the tragic Lucy Westenra; Dr. Van Helsing; and Dracula's three wives, who make brief appearances in Stoker's book but here become important characters in their own right. Hambly is a superb storyteller, and her alternate view of the Dracula story, the third Renfield interpretation in recent years (after Tim Lucas's The Book of Renfield and Lawrence Barker's Renfield) is an excellent addition to the genre. Recommended for all fiction collection.-Patricia Altner, BiblioInfo.com, Columbia, MD Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal