Dracula Son of the Dragon - Review

Author: Mark Sable

Genre: Historical Fiction / Graphic Novel

Format: Paperback

Pages: 112

I'm always a sucker for Dracule retellings. This one jumped out at me because it dealt with the man behind the fangs really. The life of Vlad before he became a vampire. So that was a different angle, and I need a quick read after the absolute sadness of my current read.

As for the story itself, I really liked it. I thought Mark Sable did a great job of telling the story of young Vlad. It was definitely a story I would want more of, and I would have loved to have more in book form. Mostly because the only I felt this story really lacked was more back story. I definitely had a hard time keeping a few of the characters straight. Especially the half-brother because there wasn't much of an introduction from him. If there hadn't been a small cast of characters before the story I wouldn't have really known who he was.

The jumps in the timeline were also really hard to keep track of, again because place and people weren't really introduced. While I love the story of Dracula, I only have the base knowledge of the man he was based on. So I spent a lot of time going back to make sure I hadn't missed pages because that was I felt. It also made it hard to get to know any of the characters as well. Everything moved so quickly and jumped from one historic event to the other, you never really got to know Vlad or his brothers. 

So the betrayal halfway through fell flat for me because I never got a chance to get to know these characters.

The biggest distraction for me was the artwork. So much was happening between the pages, I don't think I was able to see it all. And, while each character was easy to tell apart, I got lost in the dialog sometimes. Mostly because the speech bubbles were squished together and you couldn't make out the flow of conversation. The artwork was also really rough and also squished together. To the point, I kind of stopped really noticing it and was just reading the words on the page. Nothing ever really drew my eye to the page. Everything was brown and muted, even during fighting scenes.

I gave this one three stars for the story itself. That part I really liked and enjoyed and would pick something else up this author.

HAPPY READING!!