An Old Friend of the Family (Dracula #3) (1979)

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HALLOWEEN REVIEWS 2025

by Fred Saberhagen



The matriarch of the wealthy Southerland family performs a ritual left by her grandmother, none other than Mina Harker, to summon an old friend of the family, Count Dracula, to protect the clan after the murder of her granddaughter and the abduction of her grandson. 



There is more going on here than is at first apparent. 



Fred Saberhagen’s version of the famous vampire continues to be a moral, honorable character, taking on the responsibility of protecting the descendants of his great love, but one who is fully capable of brutality and cruelty once he decides his target is deserving of such treatment. 


Fred Saberhagen


Early on, Saberhagen presents a compelling and plausible imagining of what it might be like to die but not really die and then be resurrected as a vampire. 



The mythology of the series is further developed, with some tantalizing hints about the vampire world that Dracula inhabits that bode well for the remaining seven volumes in this series.


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