Guest Review: Dracula & Starwarped

Reviewed by : Priyanka Dalal

If you are in Mumbai and love books, one good place to find interesting, dirt cheap books are the second hand book stalls next to Cafe Mysore, Matunga. So after an Udipi breakfast of idlis, dosas and south indian kaafi I found two quite exciting books in the lot. Dracula by Bram Stoker and Starwarped!


Dracula - Bram Stoker
Being an avid fan of vampires from before the Twilight mania I felt I had to read the original 'Dracula' written way back in the 1800s. This is the beginning of all the vampire literature is what I thought and plunged into the book! The story starts off with an English gentleman Jonathan travelling to meet Count Dracula for work reasons. As he nears the castle his journey gets increasingly eerie. The villagers warn him to stay back but being the 'good guy' he favored his diligence and professional instincts and arrived at the assigned hour. At the castle, over many days he faces many horrors including having to live a nocturnal life, getting his blood sucked by vampire women and being locked up! The story also narrates the life of two women in England. One of them is Jonathans fiance. These chapters start out in a very 'emily bronte' fashion with dances, beaus and proposals! Later however events take a sinister turn.

The story follows Dracula's attempt to establish a base in England. A lot of myths about vampires are uncovered in the book, apart from the usual stories of garlic repulsion, bats, coffins, wooden stakes, this book uncovers other facts like vampires can't cross water unaided, they can't change shape during the day and more. The book has detailed out what a vampire is and how Dracula came to be, it tends to drag a bit since we are more used to vampire romance than drudegerous explanation of his habits but all in all its an interesting read!

Star Warped

This book is a real rolling-on-the-floor-laughing-my-ass-off book for all Star Wars fans out there. It is a written spoof on the entire movie. So it starts of with the A long time ago... text which is ofcourse changed into something quite funny, it then follows the entire movie only changing it to point out the gaffs and give it some really hilarious twists. Luke Skywalker's Tatooine nudist colony, yes you heard me right... Luke's colony happens to be well a colony people who prefer to stay naked. Obi Wan Kenobi is Old Ben Knobbli - a person who suffers from some disease which makes him bend double due to his knobbly, wobbly knees! Its quite amusing to read about Darth Vaders attempts to show his funny side, where he writes stand up comedy scripts around his habit of crushing the wind pipe of people who anger him! After a while though as all spoofs go it gets a bit much and I find I can keep the book down. It was definitely a very interesting and very different read from my usual stuff. 

(Priyanka Dalal is a social media marketeer from Mumbai. You can follow her work insights @ priyankawriting.com and find her on Twitter @priyankawriting.)