Title: Countess Bathory: The Ultimate Vampire Queen
Author: Ja2Anjelica
What is 'Countess Bathory: The Ultimate Vampire Queen'?
It is a vampire story! Whooooo!!! #Excited!
Rating -
8/10
EBI -
- Consistency with capitalisation after speech marks closed with full stops/other punctuation i.e. ." She said or ." it said.
- Watch your use of semi-colons - they're not the same as commas and shouldn't be used in place of them. For example, 'The next day, as history puts it; Countess Bathory died' could have punctuation of 'The next day, as history puts it - Countess Bathory died' or a comma.
- Tenses! Watch them like your life depends on them, especially when proof reading and editing
- Use of commas and full stops in relation to speech marks.
- Close speech with full stops before the speech marks instead of commas before when nothing follows the speech and a person replies etc.
- If you're meaning to exactly follow the story of Dracula, then really follow it down to every detail. Read the story, highlight it, makes notes on Dracula and every hinted ability. I did Dracula as part of my English Literature A Level Coursework so had to extensively research, analyse and explain it, so can see the differences. Especially in use of travel and how a huge part of Dracula's defeat and story in Bram Stoker's book is how he cannot travel over water. Horses are not tamed by Dracula or the women vampires in Dracula, either. Bat size also different.
- Don't be afraid to start new sentences
- Build on your character development, tension and language used by characters
- Go to extremes, one horse may've been enough, but with as much power and youth greed as she has, maybe she'd slaughter more for fun or to drink more or test her strength? Potential for some terrifyingly cruel imagery here.
- If you want to show difference in her and Dracula, make sure it's called out - some readers may not have read Dracula so not know all significance etc.
- Draw similarities in description, go into a huge amount of detail about settings and death and murder, no shame. Especially the settings. She gets to mansion and enters it and we see colours, but you can add specifics about any markers in the furniture or how the light angles through the windows or how the sky sets off against the mansion or the lake outside. Describe the butler, describe his features, his attitude, his eyes - are they tired, evil, knowing, hypnotised and empty?
Review:
Countess Bathory: The Ultimate Vampire Queen poses an absolutely fantastic and completely complimentary as well as original read. The concepts outlined are perfection and the plot is every vampire/gothic lover's dream. It's interesting both psychologically and from an English literature perspective. It's the perfect thing to read if you have Dracula withdrawals and its links are superb, with a lot more to come progressively throughout the story. Countess Bathory is both intriguing and terrifying, whilst also managing to be strangely likeable as a kickass female but also very despicable at the same time...the kind of contrast seen in the best kinds of villains. The writing style has perfect use of imagery and detail, especially at the onset, giving specific and detailed background information that doesn't bore the reader or put them off the story, but instead drags them in and smiles evilly at them in a glint of moonlight. This story has huge developments in store and sees huge progressions in each chapter, a kind of writing that has me excited. This story's future can be very bright despite its dark characteristics and looming shadows of death.
Blurb:
Many years ago the blood Countess died for all her horrible crimes, but like Count Dracula; she was raised from death, to live and feed on human blood to stay alive. The Countess is told that she was raised from the dead to be the supreme Vampire Queen, the female Dracula; but when she learns that female vampires from Dracula's coven have gone out and built themselves powerful empires and are called vampire Queens, she becomes enraged.
She plots to kill them all, and call them to battle her for the title "Vampire Queen", but she still doesn't know how to use her newfound vampiric powers and abilities.
All the best lovelies <3