Review: Hunting Prince Dracula

Hunting Prince Dracula by Kerri Maniscalco
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Now that I work at the Stanford University bookstore, they say I've now got access to any of quite a number of ARCs that the bookstore manages to get ahold of...and for my first ARC pick, could I have possibly done better than this unique blend of forensic science, the late Victorian era, and the Gothic?

I read Stalking Jack the Ripper not long after its initial release last year, and wasn't so impressed with it at the time, but after hearing of the sequel and its title, I had no choice but to re-read the first book. I liked it better the second time around, but still didn't think it quite validated the hype.

Hunting Prince Dracula, while a little harmed by overlength and the occasional slow, padded scene, is a major improvement over its predecessor. It not only brings our favorite characters into the Carpathian mountains, which boasts a stronger, more haunting atmosphere than Victorian London, but also gives us some more engaging new characters (including some nice f/f rep on the side, with Audrey Rose and Thomas, in particular, showing modern-like sensibilities towards it in strange contrast with their own dancing-on-eggshells-around-each-other-and-their-own-mutual attraction), some nasty professors at the prestigious Romanian forensic science academy where the book takes place, and a really engaging case of a murderer who wants us to think Dracula's back and worse than ever, but we know there'll be a more natural (though far from mundane) explanation for it all.

Best of all, this isn't going to be the end of the series - the end of the book implies another shift in setting in store, this time to America.

Hunting Prince Dracula proves to be the point where, as a writer, Maniscalco really starts Growing the Beard (if you'll forgive me this Star Trek reference.) Thank God I was able to read this ARC - it's validated this series for me and truly hooked me into the chronicles of Audrey Rose and Thomas and all their compatriots.

Here's hoping I can also get an ARC for Book 3, especially if I'm still working the bookstore job next year!

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