Thanks goes to Netgalley for the Arc!

Full disclosure: I imagined that I was going to be reading a humorous horror based on the title alone, as if it was one very long and humorous joke, but what I got instead was a serious and well thought-out exploration of the times precisely 50 years after the accounts of the original [b:Dracula|17245|Dracula|Bram Stoker|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1387151694s/17245.jpg|3165724], written in much the same style and even including a very old Van Helsing, his granddaughter, and even the inclusion of Harker's grandson, too.

These are not affected. These flow naturally into the tale, because, after all, some evils are worse than others. Dracula was originally a freedom fighter, after all, and now his homeland has just been invaded by the German War Machine. Enemy of my enemy.

After what I thought was a slow start relying overmuch on real times and places and not quite getting into the good stuff early enough, I was soon transported and delighted into the fullness of the tale, and I loved the interesting and realistic fascination between the tragic hero of Dracula and Van Helsing's granddaughter, who is a pretty fantastic and interesting character in her own right.

Did I fail to mention that this is also a pretty cool romance?

The writing is very good, too, epistolary in the same nature as the original Dracula, but it goes on with much, much better action scenes. :) I loved the Nazis and their attempt to harness the power of vampirism. :)

I repeat, this is NOT a throwaway cash-in or a humorous joke. The novel is serious and a lot more complex than I believed could be possible, full of history and deep characterizations and real love for story.

I totally recommend this! :) ( )

I really, really wanted to like it. The premise is fantastic, and I was really looking forward to it. Unfortunately, the characters are wooden (and if you're going to write a Scottish accent, for goodness' sake, do it correctly! Even taking a brief look at Scottish Twitter would have helped!) and infuriating, because even at 384 pages in, there doesn't appear to be any growth at all. I just can't go on. ( )

After the events covered in the novel Dracula, Professor Van Helsing chooses to bury Dracula rather than kill him. Years later during World War II, the Nazis are committing atrocities in Romania and running rampant where Van Helsing and his daughter fight for the resistance. He chooses to resurrect Dracula to fight the Nazis when conventional attempts to beat them have failed.

I didn't finish Dracula vs. Hitler. I didn't even make it to Dracula's resurrection. I had so many problems with the first 60 pages of this massive book. My main problems are with the uneven tone, the poor logic, the bad fan fiction elements. This book isn't as fun as it sounds. It focuses heavily on war tactics and action scenes. Horror and vampire fans will go away disappointed. However, even with this more serious tone, one particular death was so over the top it could have come out of a Saw film.

There are so many things that don't make sense. Why would Van Helsing spare Dracula? He claims it's because the vampire is a unique creature, but his whole team almost died just putting him in the ground. Apparently, Van Helsing was in his 30s during the novel to make this weird thing work which doesn't really work, especially bringing in other Dracula characters in. Jonathan Harker conveniently shows up later as an English spy and doesn't remember Van Helsing at all. I would think that whole experience would be pretty memorable and I don't get why he wouldn't remember the man who saved his wife (who is apparently not appearing in this book or he's just a huge scumbag).

The biggest problem I had with the novel was the bad fan fiction elements. Van Helsing has a daughter (of course), who just so happens to be incredibly beautiful and a fierce freedom fighter (even though she's shown to make numerous mistakes to expose them to the enemy). She is so emotionally strong that she won't even shed a tear for the boyfriend murdered brutally right in front of her. When Jonathan Harker sees her, he falls madly in love with her right away. This was the point I wanted to throw the book across the room and stopped reading. I can't invest time into a book with the flattest characters who are so awesome at what they do despite all evidence to the contrary. With Dracula vs. Hitler, I really wanted to a bloody, fun, over the top story which was not delivered. ( )