Dracula the Un-Dead

Simon Prebble is the perfect narrator for this hair-raising sequel to Bram Stoker's original DRACULA. Using Stoker's notes, Dacre Stoker, Bram's great-grandnephew, and Ian Holt, a Dracula scholar, make wonderful leaps into vampire lore and gore. Prebble is deliciously droll as he navigates the backstory, introducing characters both familiar and new. Prebble treats listeners to spot-on versions of Jonathan and Mina Harker; their actor son, Quincey; Drs. Van Helsing and Seward; and a gorgeously realized, unrelentingly vicious Countess Elizabeth Bathory, whose taste for vengeance and bloodletting is unsurpassed. Fans of the original dark fantasy will appreciate Stoker and Holt's period diction and Prebble's top-notch performance. The action is fast, bloody, often surprising, and definitely not in the vein of Stephenie Meyers's TWILIGHT series. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine


Followers of the popular vampire literary and film interpretations of recent years might be blasÄ about another performance of the exquisitely written novel that started it all. But listening to this full-cast performance turns out to be remarkably suspenseful and chilling. The superlative cast lends this powerful production the diversity that is required by the structure of the novel, which includes journal entries and letters. Each actor employs various accents, infusing into the characters vibrant emphasis, urgency, and dread. The famed vampire Count Dracula leaves a swath of exsanguinated bodies in his wake as he attempts to relocate from Transylvania to England in 1897, stalked by the brave Van Helsing. A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine