Stoker's Wilde

March 25, 2019
“Morbid and fascinating” is how a character aptly sums up the events of this entertaining supernatural mash-up. Employing the entwined lives of Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker as a springboard, Hopstaken and Prusi weave their weird tale from imagined occult experiences that might have influenced the 19th-century authors to write, respectively, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Dracula. This includes their efforts to thwart a decadent splinter sect of the Order of the Golden Dawn, obsessed with achieving immortality, that has been transformed into a horde of vampires infiltrating London under the guidance of the nefarious Black Bishop. The novel is briskly paced, owing in part to its fast-cutting epistolary format, and the authors enliven the plot by introducing characters who clearly anticipate those who will appear in Stoker and Wilde’s tales, as well as real-life celebrities including Ellen Terry, Lillie Langtry, and Sir Richard Burton. Hopstaken and Prusi have done their homework and produced a pleasing period penny dreadful.

May 1, 2019
This new historical supernatural adventure series uses the real-life complicated relationship between Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker as inspiration. The ominous yet playful tone is set right away as Wilde and Stoker are enlisted by legendary British explorer Richard Burton (and the Queen) to rid an Irish seaport of a murderous werewolf, and that's just the beginning. Written in the epistolary style of Dracula and exploring many of the themes and ideas from The Picture of Dorian Gray, the book immerses the reader in an alternate Victorian London. The fun, action-driven plot features vampires, secret societies, portals to other realms, and the theater world. Historical details and supernatural monsters abound, but it is the odd couple of Wilde and Stoker, with their diametrically opposed personalities and interesting quirks, that drives this story. Pass this volume on to readers who are hungry for more historical stories with a supernatural frame, like James Lovegrove's Cthhulu Casebooks series, The Quick by Lauren Owen (2014), Creatures of Will and Temper by Molly Tanzer (2017), and Dacre Stoker's Dracul (2018).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)