BLOOD TO BLOOD and MINA: The Dracula Story Continues

By Dan Cziraky     November 10, 2000

Mina: The Dracula Story Continues was first published in September 1994 by Ace Books. Author Elaine Bergstrom used the pseudonym 'Marie Kiraly' for her story, which picks up Mina Harker's journal entries about three-quarters of the way through Bram Stoker's classic novel Dracula. Bergstrom insisted that, in the original novel, Mina's diary entries halted after she ingested Dracula's blood, but she forgets that it is Mina who narrates the story's climax at Castle Dracula! Bergstrom also had Mina admit that it was she, not Renfield, who invited Dracula into Dr. Seward's sanitarium (shades of Fred Saberhagen!). Once Dracula's dispatched, however, Bergstrom continues the tale. The survivors return to England, but Mina is soon involved in an extra-marital affair with one of Arthur Holmwood's scandalous friends, Lord Gance. Gance takes Mina on a journey of sexual awakening that had begun with her unnatural experiences with...Dracula! In fact, in some ways, Gance reminds Mina of the vampire. Could something of Dracula have survived and somehow ended up in this English nobleman? And, what of Dracula's three 'brides,' back at the Transylvanian stronghold?

Will the fascination with romanticizing blood-sucking monsters that began in the early '90s ever end? First, there was Francis Ford Coppola's bastardized, insultingly titled Bram Stoker's Dracula, when it had less to do with Stoker than even the Tod Browning film of 1931! Then, Mina: The Dracula Story Continues came along to further desecrate Stoker's masterpiece. Where are the bats, the mists, the wolves, the deeds of horror and bloodlust? If you want some mushy romance novel, then this is fine. If you want a true sequel to Dracula that's a gothic horror story in the tradition of Stoker, this ain't it! There have been some pretty lame attempts to write sequels to Bram Stoker's classic Dracula, but this is one that borders on blasphemy! It reeks of Anne Ricean, sub-par eroticism and Fred Saberhagen's ill-advised revisionism, as well as just being a bad story. Now, to coincide with the release of Bergstrom's new novel, Berkley Books has re-released Mina with the author's real name on the cover.

While Mina was a needless melding of Stoker's brilliant classic with the schmaltz of Anne Rice's 'Vampire Chronicles,' Blood to Blood: The Dracula Story Continues, pursues Mina's exploration of her liberated sexuality, while trying to decide whether she still has a life with her husband, Victorian prude and former vampire chew-toy Jonathan Harker. Back at Castle Dracula, the last of the Count's vampire brides, the half-mad Joanna, his own half-sister, ventures out into the world. Grabbing some gold, gems, papers, and a box of graveyard dirt, she acquires a young, Irish girl as her slave-blood donor-lover. Jonathan Harker starts to dream of her, which Van Helsing takes as a sign she is coming for revenge. Meanwhile, Mina has inherited a small fortune from Dracula's doppelganger, Lord Gance. Independent beyond her wildest dreams, she sets out to start up a charitable organization. Arthur Holmwood, fiancé of Dracula's first victim, Lucy Westenra, is still agonizing over having destroyed her. Learning that Joanna has arrived in London, he sets out to learn all about her, eventually falling in love with her. But, Van Helsing has divined Arthur's dangerous scheme, and seeks only to destroy the last of Dracula's hellspawn women.

In the end, the whole thing is a mish-mash of soap opera plots, vampire lore, soft-core eroticism and lesbian interludes that will certainly please Howard Stern fans. What any of this has to do with Dracula, however, is beyond me! It's a shame that Stoker's novel was never officially copyrighted in the U.S., and that the international copyrights have all lapsed. At least then the Count would be safe from well-meaning clods and talentless hacks like Bergstrom. If you want good Dracula pastiches, check out either Kim Newman's Anno Dracula books and stories or Jeanne Kalogridis' Diaries of the Family Dracul trilogy.

MINA: THE DRACULA STORY CONTINUES, by Elaine Bergstrom. Ace Books, September 2000, 325 pp., $5.99.
BLOOD TO BLOOD: THE DRACULA STORY CONTINUES, by Elaine Bergstrom. Ace Books, October 2000, 320 pp., $5.99.