Anno Dracula: One Thousand Monsters

Anno Dracula, Book 5

By: Kim Newman

Narrated by: William Gaminara

In 1899, Genevieve Dieudonne is working as a doctor on a ship of vampire refugees from Dracula's Britain, as Christina Light, a vampire who can literally turn into light, persuades the Emperor to cede a section of Tokyo to her as the Vampire Bund, a Shanghai-like international settlement of the undead and her own power base.

New Year's Eve 1999 in the Vampire Bund in Tokyo, and Christina is on the cusp of completing her 100-year plan to become an ascendant power in the world. Only vampire samurai Nezumi stands in her way....

In this the fifth gripping story in the acclaimed alternative history vampire series, Newman takes his story to turn-of-the-century Japan and a world of cyberpunk, kaiju and yakuza.

©2017 Kim Newman (P)2017 Audible, Ltd

Newman's own

I may be getting tired of getting the references, but the plot's reasonable. Newman's conceit that almost all supernatural beings are types of vampire is strained here, though.

It is good to see _fiction_ about the most powerful nation in the world falling to an entirely unsuitable person….

Someone should have compiled a list of Japanese words—and Japanisations of foreign words—used in the piece, and given the narrator proper pronunciations. I fear I place the responsibility for his Christina Light's generic Yank voice on his shoulders—she is upper-class and raised mostly in Italy, so that's not right at all.