Review: The Beast of London by L. D. Goffigan

 

Book: The Beast of London (Mina Murray #1)

Author: L. D. Goffigan

All three volumes are out in the series

Look, I get it.  What modern reader hasn’t read Stoker’s Dracula and thought, we need a Mina Murray kicks ass story?  And hey, if you want to work a Van Helsing that is basically Hugh Jackman’s as opposed to Stoker’s more power to you.  So I am fully for the concept of this book, I really am.

 

               It’s just, well, I kept going "really with an eye roll" way too much.

 

               This book is a retelling of Dracula.  The focus is on Mina Murray (she marries Jonathan Harker in the original novel), and the book is told via her point of view.  While the characters from the novel are slightly or radically different, the setting is still the same 1890s London.  And that causes problems.

 

               In general, the book has been edited.  When writing action sequences, Goffigan does a good jump.  It’s just, there are issues.

 

               One of the issues is structural. There are times when Mina pauses to basically info dump, and there are times when the info dumps are repetitive.  This starts early on when Mina is walking home from work, and this is also when other issues start to come in to play. 

 

               Like in the original novel, Mina is orphaned.  She works as a teacher, and as she walks to her home in Highgate, she works though the East End where the Ripper recently hunted.  She walks by herself and then feels that she is being followed.  At which point the reader gets paragraphs of her past and of her recent conversation with the schoolmaster where she teaches whom she calls by his first name.  This in particular given the time period is jarring.

 

               As is her walking by herself. 

 

               To be fair, Goffigan does try to offer a plausible reason for Mina being who she is here – she traveled with her father, he made sure she learned self defense, she is interested in the natural world because her father was a scientist, her father came from a wealthy family who worked in finance, so she has money.  She also has a pair of knives that would have been very “exotic” for the London at the time.

 

               But the back story doesn’t quite work and neither does her thinking about it when she senses danger. I mean, it goes on for literally what feels like pages, and she keeps noting she is thinking about her past, making the reader forget about the idea of danger.  But also if she has money why does she have to relay on the Harker’s for her teaching position, couldn’t she just found a school?  If she lives in good sized house, why doesn’t she have at least one maid in addition to the housekeeper who does not live on site (which is strange)?  If she loves her housekeeper and Jonathan so much why doesn’t she, you  know, show it?

 

               But hey,  fiction.  Right?  Well, no, because setting  a book in a real time and place means at least an attempt to depict it correctly.  But I could live with all that backstory because at least it is an attempt to explain.   Mina’s being the only good woman of the book was a bit annoying but that trope appears in so many books anyways. 

 

               Then came the ball. Mina’s finance Jonathan gets kidnapped and Mina, dressed in full 1890s society ball dress, jumps on a horse to chase down the carriage he has been hustled into to.

 

               Yeah, no.

 

1.            Who rides a horse to a ball anyway? 

2.            Horses are not simply left in stable yards.

3.            Even if it was not a billowy or train style ball gown, riding aside in one would be next to impossible.  I kept imagining a woman in a ball gown trying to get on a horse in ball gown of the time, and kept laughing so that other people on the train kept looking at me.

 

Honesty, if you wanted a horse chase sequence, have Mina and Jonathan go riding.  They could do that in London.

 

And I tried to continue after that, but when Mrs. Harker who is wondering where her son is because Mina set her some half ass note, shows up and is, rightly, upset that Mina is with a strange man, Mrs. Harker is painted and treated in such away by every character as if her comments are uncalled for, and they really aren’t.  She is acting like a mother.  She shouldn't be used simply to show how "modern" and better Mina is for not being a society lady.

 

And heaven forbid, Mina actually have Lucy as friend as opposed to a Lucy who is little more a plot device vampiric lap dog. 

 

Can we stop this please?  It is okay to have women be friends in novels.  It is okay to have more than one woman good at something.  They can even talk to each other.

 

 

DNF at 34%.