Dracula Cha Cha Cha (Anno Dracula)Kim Newman
Titan Books, April 2012
ISBN: 978-0857680853
Written by award-winning novelist Kim Newman, this is a brand-new edition, with additional 40,000 word never-before-seen novella, of the popular third installment of the Anno Dracula series, Dracula Cha Cha Cha.
For this third book in Newman’s series, vampires and warm bodies are all coming to Rome for the marriage of Count Dracula to the young and ethereal Moldovian Princess Asa Vajda, a marriage expected to thrust the Count back into the post-World War II political limelight. After Victorian London and the trenches of France, this outing takes place in the bustling city of Rome, 1959.
Journalist and vampire Kate Reed has arrived in the city and takes up with a some notable vampires who end up dead, with Kate as a witness. Originally arriving to visit her sick ex-husband Charles Beauregard, ex-British non-vampire spy, she gets blamed for more than one murder, which mysteriously occur at the hands of a masked villain called the Crimson Executioner.
The plot focuses on the relationship between three lovers/ex-lovers of Beauregard–Kate, as well as Geneviève Dieudonné–a 400 year old vampire who has the look of a 16-year-old and is caring for Charles at his death, and Penelope Churchward, also a vampire and longtime friend to Kate who wants to prevent the aging Charles from dying by finally 'turning' him.
What really makes the world of 1959 stand out are the vivid descriptions of places, clothes, trends, and people. Newman pulls in anyone and everyone from fiction’s past–vampires live forever so he could select from 1888 to 1959 to populate his world–as well as tying in real-world characters, famous and infamous.
Well-researched to mesh together both fantasy worlds and then cross back and forth into the world of real-life historical figures, it is surprisingly easy to get sucked right in to a world where Count Dracula actually lived, and was not killed by Van Helsing, but went on to marry the widowed Queen Victoria in 1888 and rule England with her as Prince Consort.
KIM NEWMAN is a well known and respected author and movie critic. He writes regularly for Empire Magazine and contributes to The Guardian, The Times, Time Out and others. He makes frequent appearances on radio and TV. He has won the Bram Stoker, International Horror Guild, British Fantasy and British Science Fiction Awards and been nominated for the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.
ISBN: 978-0857680853; ISBN10: 0857680854; Imprint: Titan Books; On Sale: 10/9/2012; Format: Paperback; Pages: 512; $14.95
