[book - review] Dracula unbound (1990)

Like many, I'm fascinated by the sensual and violently primitive figure of the vampire, even if I'm not a big lover of Stoker's book.
Over the years I had the chance to read many books about vampires, some truly masterpieces (Carmilla of Sheridan LeFanu, The Vampire of Polidori) some enjoyable (Kalogridis' Diaries of the Family Dracul or the Anita Blake's series) and then some really horrible (one word... sparkling) to finally find this one.

As like the previous book from the same author I reviewed (Cryptozoic) an alternative theory (that's funny, a new theory about a imaginary character) about vampires' existence is proposed but this time is plausible, it has a logic that goes beyond the book's plot... more, it would be even believable in our own reality!

The characters are well described, sometimes even extremely and the storyline is catching with just some low points now and then.

A book for both lovers of true vampires and sci-fi.

[book - review] Cryptozoic (1967)

There's something that I think is essential when I'm reviewing a scifi book : its verisimilitude.
Obviously in a gender like Sci-Fi to work with feet strongly bound to earth or to not claim wonderful technological inventions or astounding evolutions would be nonsense, but I can't completely leave aside the fact that explanations should have a logic (within the book's microcosm) and a verisimilitude that the writer should have given to it.

And this is the biggest lack of this Aldiss' work.
The writer talks about mind trips, flowing of time and begin/end of the world by giving to us a really interesting theory on time itself but, other than being really extreme (a thing that it's not such an invalidating thing for scifi stuff) lay its basement on a lists of theories and conjectures that have the same stability of a cards castle built upon an awaken cat!

The book itself, although, is enough enjoyable but some paragraphs are a bit hard to follow, both for author's writing style and for the notions ("realistic", so based on our world like description of mental illnesses, or "imaginary", like those previously mentioned theories on time and stuff) they're filled with.
The characters are not badly described but none of them have that sparkle of genius that will keep it in your mind after the book's end.