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A review by countessjess
The Lair of the White Worm by Bram Stoker
3.0
The Lair of the White Worm is the second novel I’ve read by Bram Stoker, the first being Dracula, naturally. I found a big difference between the two books. Dracula is one of my absolute favourite books, and though I didn’t expect this book to equal Dracula, I did expect it to be good.
I did enjoy this book, at first anyway. It started out in a promising manner but I felt like it let itself down a lot. I enjoyed reading about the bond between Sir Nathaniel and Adam, but was kind of hoping for more of a bond between Adam and his uncle as well.
The beginning of the book seems to set the Caswall family up as some sort of really weird, spooky, evil line of people. And while Edgar Caswall is very eccentric, he can’t be said to be evil, rather just mad. And that’s a bit of a disappointment because I expected more from him. I also couldn’t quite work out the point of his whole mesmerism deal and how it really related back to the main story.
Lady Arabella was creepy, but I would have liked to have known more about her. The thing about this book is that is has a lot of characters that it seems to want to focus on. At the beginning it’s just Adam, his uncle, Sir Nathaniel, and Edgar Caswall. But then it starts adding in Lady Arabella and Mimi as key characters too, and the book is just too short for all this to be done effectively. It just feels like Stoker was trying to zone in on too many characters in too much depth for such a short book.
The racism in this book was hideous, too. I tried to just ignore it for the most part but a couple of times it just became really difficult. I would suggest that it would be worth pushing through - if the book was better. As it is, I don’t really see a reason to read about that much racism with a lacklustre conclusion to the book.
I will say that I really did enjoy the parts of this book in which Adam and Sir Nathaniel had their discussions. I felt they had a really good dynamic and what they talked about was interesting. But yeah, otherwise, this book was not that excellent, though the idea definitely had promise.
I did enjoy this book, at first anyway. It started out in a promising manner but I felt like it let itself down a lot. I enjoyed reading about the bond between Sir Nathaniel and Adam, but was kind of hoping for more of a bond between Adam and his uncle as well.
The beginning of the book seems to set the Caswall family up as some sort of really weird, spooky, evil line of people. And while Edgar Caswall is very eccentric, he can’t be said to be evil, rather just mad. And that’s a bit of a disappointment because I expected more from him. I also couldn’t quite work out the point of his whole mesmerism deal and how it really related back to the main story.
Lady Arabella was creepy, but I would have liked to have known more about her. The thing about this book is that is has a lot of characters that it seems to want to focus on. At the beginning it’s just Adam, his uncle, Sir Nathaniel, and Edgar Caswall. But then it starts adding in Lady Arabella and Mimi as key characters too, and the book is just too short for all this to be done effectively. It just feels like Stoker was trying to zone in on too many characters in too much depth for such a short book.
The racism in this book was hideous, too. I tried to just ignore it for the most part but a couple of times it just became really difficult. I would suggest that it would be worth pushing through - if the book was better. As it is, I don’t really see a reason to read about that much racism with a lacklustre conclusion to the book.
I will say that I really did enjoy the parts of this book in which Adam and Sir Nathaniel had their discussions. I felt they had a really good dynamic and what they talked about was interesting. But yeah, otherwise, this book was not that excellent, though the idea definitely had promise.