The Dracula Series by Fred Saberhagen
The Dracula Series, authored by Fred Saberhagen, reinterprets the classic tale of Bram Stoker's Dracula through various narratives that highlight the perspective of Count Dracula himself and intertwine historical and supernatural elements. The series begins with "The Dracula Tape," which presents a retelling of the original story from Dracula's viewpoint, challenging the reliability of the original witnesses and revealing a more nuanced account of the events involving Jonathan Harker, Mina, and Van Helsing. Subsequent novels, such as "The Holmes-Dracula File," merge the worlds of Sherlock Holmes and Dracula as they collaborate to solve crimes linked to bloodless corpses and a plague threat.
Further entries like "An Old Friend of the Family" and "Thorn" delve into themes of loyalty, ancient rituals, and lost love, while "Dominion" explores modern-day struggles for magical power involving Dracula and historical figures like Merlin. The series also introduces nonlinear storytelling in "A Question of Time," where time and reality are manipulated through supernatural means. In "Séance for a Vampire," Holmes and Dracula join forces again to unravel a mystery involving a drowned daughter and a stolen treasure. Overall, the Dracula Series combines horror, adventure, and detective fiction, inviting readers to reconsider familiar narratives and explore the complexities of its characters.
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Subject Terms
The Dracula Series
First published:The Dracula Tape (1975), The Holmes-Dracula File (1978), An Old Friend of the Family (1979), Thorn (1980), Dominion (1982), A Matter of Taste (1990), A Question of Time (1992), and Séance for a Vampire (1994)
Type of work: Novels
Type of plot: Fantasy—alternate history
Time of work: Primarily contemporary
Locale: Various locations throughout Europe and the United States
The Plot
The Dracula Tape, the first and perhaps best novel in the series, retells the story found in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) from the point of view of Count Dracula himself. The novel, supposedly dictated to descendants of the Harkers, is a brilliant reexamination of the events surrounding Dracula, Jonathan Harker, Mina, Lucy, Renfield, and the horrid Van Helsing. Fred Saberhagen’s retelling has the feel of accuracy as he points out the faults in the accounts of the witnesses in Stoker’s novel and reveals a much more logical tale wherein Dracula points out, for example, the improbability of uncovering him in his coffin in the middle of the night and Van Helsing’s cruelty in attempting transfusions without the aid of blood-type matching.
The Holmes-Dracula File links distant cousins Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula to solve a series of crimes involving a trail of bloodless corpses as well as a criminal group’s threat of plague-infested rats. The novel provides Saberhagen’s brilliant insight into the personalities of Dracula, Holmes, and Watson.
Dracula’s loyalty is the main thrust of the novel An Old Friend of the Family. The Southerland family, living in Chicago, invokes an ancient ritual supplied by the count himself for the descendants of the Harker family, to be used only in a dire emergency. Clarissa Southerland, granddaughter of Wilhelmina Harker, is not sure what to expect when Dr. Emile Corday (Dracula) arrives, claiming to be an old friend of the family. He proves to be very resourceful in aiding the family to recapture a daughter embraced by one of the nosferatu and a son kidnapped and tortured, as well as in punishing those responsible for these atrocities, including the evil Morgan La Fey.
In Thorn, Saberhagen elaborates on some of the historical activities in the life of Vlad Tepes, weaving a dramatic story of a powerful love and intertwining it with a modern attempt to recover the lost portrait of his lover. In telling this story, Saberhagen adeptly parallels the lives of the then-mortal count and the modern king of the vampires.
Dominion tells the tale of an ancient struggle for an item of tremendous magical power, rekindled in modern Chicago and its surrounding areas. The presence of several bloodless bodies attracts the attention of Detective Joe Keogh. He has married into the Southerland family and therefore is acquainted with the count, but only recently has he begun to trust him. The struggle for power eventually involves Dracula and several powerful magicians from the past, including the great Merlin.
The rescuers’ roles are reversed in A Matter of Taste as the Southerland family must battle half a millennia of the count’s enemies to save him. Again Saberhagen interlaces past and present, narrating the events surrounding Vlad Tepes’ assassination and initial years as a vampire and connecting these to the enemies of the present who wish to destroy him. John Southerland, now grown and engaged, and Joe Keogh, both of whom are now experienced with vampires, head the forces attempting to free the count.
A Question of Time may be the most unusual novel of the entire series, as time becomes completely nonlinear. A nosferatu sculptor named Edgar Tyrell is conducting experiments, mining the very fabrics of time and reality from deep within the ancient rocks of the Grand Canyon. In 1935, a Conservation Corps worker, Jake Rezner, is lured into working for Tyrell by his attraction for Camilla, a beautiful woman trapped by Tyrell in 1965. In 1991, Cathy Brainard, supposedly the niece of the famous sculptor but actually his daughter, winds up missing. Joe Keogh (now the head of his own investigative agency specializing in the supernatural), John Southerland, and Mr. Strangeways (Dracula) are called in to find her. All the tales eventually overlap, with Tyrell’s mining threatening the lives and reality of the major characters.
Dracula, Holmes, and Watson are reunited in Séance for a Vampire as they attempt to decipher the bizarre events surrounding the Altamont household. The eldest daughter has drowned under mysterious circumstances. A mischievous confidence game pulled off by two false mediums trying to turn the family’s misfortune into their own profit unexpectedly brings back the daughter, with a message about a stolen treasure that must be returned. This treasure was stolen by the Russian pirate Kulakov, who was embraced as a vampire to escape death by hanging in 1765. Kulakov believes that the Altamonts have his lost treasure and is terrorizing the family to ensure its return. Holmes and Dracula team up again to solve this baffling crime and battle the supernatural forces masterminding it.