This grew on me. It's an alternate universe of Stoker's Dracula, where he survived Van Helsing and marries the widowed Queen Victoria. I had some resistance to this premise--this was an age where a constitutional crises was caused by Victoria wanting to retain her ladies in waiting--I couldn't imagine her being allowed to marry Dracula, or the changes that followed which are written of being started by the crown--nor could I understand why it didn't touch off war, civil and international.
However, it's a great romp, in the spirit of the best fan fiction, and I don't mean that disparagingly. Characters that appear include many historical figures and fictional characters from the world of Sherlock Holmes such as Inspector Lestrade, Mycroft and Moriarty and Colonel Moran, Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Welles' Dr Moreau, Merrick the "Elephant Man" the poets Swinburne and Oscar Wilde--and most important to the plot--Jack the Ripper. I'm sure I didn't catch a quarter of the historical and literary allusions.
Also, in vampire works you tend to have either monsters or very humanized creatures--this had an interesting mix of both, as it was posited there are different blood lines of vampires, and that of Dracula was corrupted. Dracula himself appears only at the end, but it's particularly memorable, an image out of Dante.
I liked the main (I think) original characters, Genevieve, a vampire from the time of Joan of Arc, and Beauregard, one of the "warms" who has yet to turn. This is part of a series I'd certainly be interested in continuing, although a friend whose judgment I trust said they don't hold up to the charm of the first book.
