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Dracula Cha Cha Cha |
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Author:
Kim Newman
By Pocket Books
Average Customer Rating: 
List Price: £6.99
Our Price: £2.98
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780671022099
ISBN: 0671022091
Label: Pocket Books
Manufacturer: Pocket Books
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: 2001-05-08
Publisher: Pocket Books
Studio: Pocket Books |
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Amazon.co.uk Review
What's the best way to approach Newman's brilliant new addition to his reinvention of the Dracula myth? Is it to expect an eccentrically plotted, flesh-tingling horror tale with some stunningly orchestrated (and grisly) set pieces? Or is it look for a highly intelligent, post-modern riff on the vampire concept, stuffed full of clever and witty references to both real-life and fictional characters? Actually, it's both. Since the groundbreaking Anno Dracula, Newman has not been content to turn out merely efficient and atmospheric thrillers (although he can do that as effortlessly as anyone in the genre); clearly what excites him is to extrapolate elements of an over-familiar genre into a richly textured picture of a society: Victorian England in Anno Dracula, and a fascinatingly realised Rome in the late 1950s in this latest book. Into this world of La Dolce Vita, paparazzi and coins in fountains, Newman injects his highly individual spin on a society in which vampirism is endemic. The jet setters, intellectuals and vampires of the Eternal City are talking about the forthcoming marriage of Count Dracula (in Italian exile from Transylvania) to the Moldavian Princess Asa Vajda. Some speculate that this is the first step in Dracula's master plan: to reassert his supremacy as Lord of the Undead. But this is essentially a backdrop to Newman's real story--an implacable, terrifying and enigmatic figure known as the Crimson Executioner is bloodily dispatching vampires in the city. Coming closer and closer to some grim revelations is Newman's insecure journalist heroine Kate, but the masterstroke here is the involvement of undead British secret agent Bond. However, this isn't quite Ian Fleming's sardonic character: and the other literary characters finding themselves involved in the operatic blood-letting include Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley, among many others. The brilliance and wit with which Newman reinvents these characters and incorporates them into his own outrageous narrative will probably make it difficult to ever see them in the same light again. But never do these mordantly funny reinventions overwhelm the inexorable progress of the plot, and Kate, struggling with her own vampirism, is a heroine as richly characterised as any in mainstream fiction. And when it comes to delivering the goods in terms of the gruesome, Newman has few equals: Something she'd never seen before happened to Malenka. Pockets of blubber bulged under Malenka's skin, inflating her face, her belly, her thighs, her torso, her arms. She ballooned, splitting like overcooked sausage. White stuff, veined with red, bubbled out of her rent skin. Her dress exploded. --Barry Forshaw
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Fun, Frightening, Fabulous, 2000-06-16
Bloody brilliant! Kim Newman has to be one of the best writers in the UK today, he writes so effortlessly, with wit, style and immagination. DRACULA CHA CHA CHA is a wonderful confection of horror, dark humour and real pathos, He manages to take other people's characters like the vampire Bond and take them beyond the framework of the original writer's work, but doesn't really change them, just makes them fit his wonderful world. A really fun read.
An stylish creation that's not just horror, 2000-05-18
Imagine a world where vampires can wander out in daylight, where they are co-existing side by side with warm blooded humans and where being a vampire doesn't necessarily make you evil. Welcome to the fantastic world of Kim Newman. If all you know about vampires is what you've seen on "Buffy", then here is a wonderful creation that combines a huge range of information from vampire myth, movie and stories.But even better is Newman's twisted use of people from fact, fantasy and fiction from across the board. Here we've got a 007 who has been boosted by vampire blood, so it's a bloody mary(perhaps) shaken not stirred. A human user called Tom Ripley, who'll take advantage of anyone human or vampire. And a myriad of other figures from every genre you can remeber and some you can't. If you don't like horror this is the book for you, because it looks at a world where vampires may drink blood, but have just as many problems as the rest of us (in this case a serial killer who can take them down, as well as dealing with the death of a loved one, growing older, growing up.) This is wonderfully written, exceptionally humane horror/fantasy and one of the most inventive books of the year.
Newman doing what he does best..., 2000-05-23
After the very slight fall off of Bloody Red Baron, Kim Newman is right back on form with a ritzy, fast moving take on Rome in the 50s. Think Frederico Fellini meets Calvino meets Ian Flemming, with literary gags and cultural illusions falling like warm rain. Loved it.
 The league of nearly extraordinary gentlemen, 2007-12-02
The great Alan Moore isn't the first writer to have come up with the idea of recycling old pulp literary figures in new works (as Kim Newman somewhat grumpily pointed out in a brief afterword to Seven Stars). Here Newman continues the vampire cycle started in Anno Dracula with his second sequel. I have to start by saying that I'm a Kim Newman fan, and I'd love to have given this mostly excellent novel 5 stars... unfortunately whilst 95% of this novel is as marvellous as you'd expect from a writer of his calibre, it suffers from the same flaw as his The Bloody Red Baron: the ending is frankly a bit of a damp squib. The prose is outstanding, the characterizations are outstanding, the concept is outstanding... but it's almost as if once he's decided on the setting of the novel the plot itself comes as something of an afterthought and consequently ends up building up to, well, not that much. This was frustrating - but just about forgiveable - in The Bloody Red Baron if you viewed it as an allegory on the waste of life in WW1, but here it's just frustrating.
Having said all this I'm still glad that I read this novel, and not just for the very brief but hilarious appearance of one Anthony Allosius Hancock as an embittered vampire artist (stolen straight from Hancocks film The Rebel)! However Anno Dracula still easily remains Newman's best vampire novel by far, so if you've never read Kim Newman, Anno Dracula is the one novel of his that you MUST read.
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