The Journal of Professor Abraham Van Helsing

Van Helsing is one of the characters in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. This journal starts a couple of months before the story of Dracula, and ends a couple of months afterwards. At first, Van Helsing really doesn’t believe in vampires, but when he’s visiting a friend and watches him be attacked and killed by a vampire, he has no choice to believe in them. At this point, Van Helsing takes on the mission to prevent the spread of vampirism. (Erm, perhaps “mission” wasn’t the correct word to use as I now have the Mission Impossible theme stuck in my head.)

I thought some of the best parts of this book were the foreword, footnotes and afterward. It amused me to no end that the author was trying to convince me that Van Helsing wasn’t a show more fictional character, but was a real person. Kupfer makes it sound like his contemporaries have been mocking and ridiculing him because of the fact that a journal he found in an attic belonged to a real Van Helsing that really hunted vampires.

Overall, the book was alright. Nothing super special, but a good light read. The vampires here were much eviler than most of the other vampires I’ve been reading about lately, which was such a nice change. Lisa mentioned in her blog not too long ago about how vampires are usually no longer considered to be the monsters they really are, but things in modern culture focus more on how they are romantic and sexy… Well, I had high hopes that this book wouldn’t focus on the sensual aspect of the vampire, but more on the scary parts, and for the most part I wasn’t disappointed. show less

This book was written as a series of journal entries with postscripts. I found it both entertaining and enlightening{in a manner}. Interesting for sure. I did read it in one afternoon. At first, I thought perhaps it a ya reader, due to its size and the size of print, but I am not sure that was the intended audience. I don't know that I would reccommend it to anyone to read, unless they just "liked" reading everything written on vampires. It was neither a huge tale, nor gory, nor romantic. It was a "journaled" account from Van Helsing's pov. published, after the fact. Though i do not reccommend it, I do not regret spending an entire afternoon within it's pages either, so take that for what you will.