I can’t remember why I had this sitting around on my ereader (apart from it being public domain and therefore free). I think it might be because it was supposedly an influence in Stephen King’s short story “Jerusalem’s Lot” in Night Shift, which I quite liked, but since then I’ve read Stoker’s Dracula and really didn’t like it. Compared to The Lair of the White Worm, though, Dracula is a beautiful masterpiece. This is a really, really, really bad book. Even amongst Gothic scholars, Stoker’s die-hard fans and general lovers of old-timey English horror literature, The Lair of the White Worm is a rambling and nonsensical novel.

The plot, such as it is, involves young colonial lad Adam Shaw returning to the motherland at the invitation of his great-uncle, who wishes to pass on his Staffordshire mansion to him. But it turns out one of their neighbours is an ancient and monstrous wyrm-like creature in human guise, so they take it upon themselves to destroy her. There are also weird psychic battles between unrelated characters, a horrifically racist caricature of an African voodoo priest, and a gigantic kite which controls birds or something? I gave up trying to follow the plot after about forty pages. Oh, and despite being set in 1860, the climax involves copious amounts of dynamite, which wasn’t invented until 1867.

It explained a lot when I found out The Lair of the White Worm was written after Stoker had a a number of strokes in the midst of tertiary syphilis, and he died not long after finishing it. Apparently the original version had forty chapters; I appear to have read the edited 1925 version which removed almost a hundred pages, and thank God for that. I can’t imagine the malarkey that would have gone on in those extra chapters. The Lair of the White Worm is an outright bad novel, and was only published because it was written by an extremely popular author and would have sold no matter what its pages contained.

(And what the hell’s going on with that cover? Why does the Worm have arms?)

Couldn't finish it. Just not my style and there are too many good books to read.

Pretty badly written.

There's germs of cool ideas in here—the mesmerist, the prehistoric monster, the birds—but it's all so haphazardly thrown together that the book ends up a big fat mess.

This was a good idea. An interesting story and could have been very good.
However- the quality of writing just isn’t always there. Sometimes there are details and events just missing. It’s a pretty cliche story. I’ll fill in the gaps with my imagination.

When I read older novels I try to remember that sexism and racism are to be reluctantly accepted as an unpleasant fact of past times. Attitudes and opinions have changed and casual racism was not always meant maliciously. There is a nod towards acknowledgement that racism is wrong in this book through the words of a character and a note that she used the N word for effect- but the narrator uses it casually and regularly and describes the West African in seriously unpleasant ways.
It is unnecessary and extreme rather than culturally ( of the time) casual in places and is not confined to unpleasant characters.
To a modern reader it is really distasteful. I almost stopped reading. Too hard to ignore for the sake of the story. I’ve read loads of classic/ older novels and have never read something so nasty.

In summary: good idea poorly executed with blatant racism.

I'm skipping this one out. I know it's a changing of the times, but the racism is real bad in this one - not to mention the sexism. Plus, it's not all that vampire-y from what I could tell. I just don't feel like stomaching racism for a half-baked story.

http://www.feedbooks.com/book/459

1.5 stars. Ouch. I read this short novel knowing nothing more than it was Stoker's last work. Loving Dracula so much, I was excited to dive in. It went downhill pretty fast with poorly developed characters, a plot that jumps all over the place, and an ending straight out of the movie Tremors (except, unlike that awesome movie, this novel just stunk). It also doesn't help that Stoker was droppin' n-bombs left and right, along with some pretty harsh racial rhetoric.

I've enjoyed reading this novel's reviews on Goodreads as a sort of cathartic experience! So many people had the same reaction. Stoker's final novel seems to be almost universally panned, and for good reason. And that's really unfortunate because there were so many elements that makes this novel appear cool on the surface: a guy obsessed with Mesmer trying to use his powers over others, an ageless aristocratic witch with a monstrous worm in her yard, and a dynamite ending (literally!). And yet, the whole thing was just a painful mess. It wasn't even "so bad it's good." What a disappointment!

I won't give up on Stoker, though. I'm planning to read some of his short stories soon and still have high hopes for something else worthwhile from the author of Dracula.

A young australian man is summoned to England by his granduncle to take over his estate. It starts alright, and then... it just gets weird and bad. It's racist and sexist, even for the time it was written in. The plot is super weird and random (what was the deal with the kite and all that?), pretty hard to get into, boring and just not scary. There are a lot of monologues which is pretty tiring to read. I read the original version, so FORTY chapters - but only 150 pages though. Luckily the short chapters really helped me get through it. I can't believe this was written by Bram Stoker - but at the same time I can tell it's written by him. But this was just.. pretty bad. It's not the worst book in the world, but... If you're reading reviews to decide if you're going to read it or not, just don't.