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Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Tales

Bram Stoker

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Oct 05, 2015 Max rated it really liked it

Shelves: horror, gothic

(Note: this rating and review is only about the short stories. To read my review of Lair of the White Worm go to that page.)

This is an excellent collection of short stories, with some really creepy and disturbing ones. Stoker clearly didn't have a one-off hit with Dracula - he's got a lot more good stuff in him. I've read Dracula's Guest, the titular story, a number of times before, and while it's still fun, it's definitely one of the weaker ones. It lacks the terror and cleverness of the first (Note: this rating and review is only about the short stories. To read my review of Lair of the White Worm go to that page.)

This is an excellent collection of short stories, with some really creepy and disturbing ones. Stoker clearly didn't have a one-off hit with Dracula - he's got a lot more good stuff in him. I've read Dracula's Guest, the titular story, a number of times before, and while it's still fun, it's definitely one of the weaker ones. It lacks the terror and cleverness of the first four chapters of Dracula. The Judge's House has two classic horror elements: rats and an evil portrait. It's a pretty good tale of a rational man encountering the supernatural and slowly going mad as a result. The Squaw is probably my favorite story, as it is paced excellently. It's one of those cases where you know what's going to happen and yet you can't look away, with a great ending and a truly creepy cat. The Secret of the Growing Gold is another story that uses Gothic tropes I'm familiar with, and it's a pretty good example of the man who kills his wife and then marries another woman, only to be haunted by his first wife. A Gipsy Prophecy is an interesting one, since it does a good job of building tension over whether a murderous prophecy will be fulfilled, only to seemingly subvert things at the last moment. The Coming of Abel Behenna is another story built on old tropes, but Stoker does a good job of it. The Burial of the Rats is my other favorite from this collection. Once again, there are creepy rats, but there are also humans that are frighteningly rat-like. It features a chase through a downtrodden district of Paris and a number of corpses eaten to the bone by rats. The last two stories are a bit strange and don't quite fit with the others. A Dream of Red Hands has nice creepy dreams in it, but is largely a Christian morality tale. Crooken Sands does a nice job with its doppleganger plot, but there's too much humor in it for it to really spook me. All in all, I loved this collection. It has some good scares and some good twists on old plots. ...more

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Jan 07, 2013 Bryan rated it really liked it

Jun 09, 2019 Jussi Kenkkilä marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Aug 14, 2021 Kenneth Hite rated it liked it

Jan 15, 2022 Jussi Kenkkilä marked it as to-read

May 25, 2022 Philip Pepin marked it as to-read

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