Silver in the Blood

Silver in the Blood by Jessica Day George     Audio Book:  9 hours     Paperback Book:  368 pages                 

A new telling of the Dracula story.   Set in the 1890s, two young cousins, raised in the United States by an American father and a Romanian mother are used to all of the finer things in life.   They dress in the finest clothes from Paris and travel extensively.   Little do they know they are being preened to meet their Grandmother who is of the Romanian upperclass.   The girls have met some aunts, uncles and cousins during their childhood but now that they have grown up into young woman and honed their social skills amongst the upper crust in the U.S. their parents tell them it is time to meet the rest of their Romanian family.    They are all excited about such a marvelous trip until they begin encountering men who ask them the strangest questions, “Are you claw? Wing? Or smoke?”   First of all the girls have been brought up in genteel society and feel it is a rude affront for these men, to accost them so.    The cousins are as close as sisters and look out for one another.   Once they arrive in Moldavia however, things begin to get very peculiar.    Upon meeting their maternal Grandmother things really become bizarre.    Grandma is no warm fuzzy give you hugs and cookies type of gal, she is hard as nails with a mean disposition and nothing but sneering looks for these two young debutantes.    And Grandmother is supporting the decendent of the Drakula family to help him usurp the royal thrown from the reigning king and queen.    The words smoke, claw and wing will become very important.   The characters even refer to Bram Stoker’s Drakula as bringing tourists in to Romania.   Vlad Tepesh is a national hero there, afterall.   Some of the names of various characters bring to mind Bram Stoker’s characters, the girls have an Aunt Mina, one of the girls is called Lou Lou (similar to Mina’s friend, Lucy), another character’s name is very close to Jonathan Harker.    The author gives a delicious glimpse into Romania of that era and what life for the elegant set must have been like there.   A fun read and an interesting spin on the Children of the Night.   I enjoyed it very much.    The writer must have travelled there because there are so many spot on references to places, foods, customs and rivalries.   Well done.