In the first of our new series of guest reviews, Merjot has volunteered to flush the turd that is Bram Stoker’s lesser known horror classic.

A Literary garbage fire

by Merjot

Rating this story on my arbitrary scale, I give it 3.4/10.

One happy evening I was maneuvering my way through the best subreddit on Reddit, r/PieceofShitBookClub, when I happened upon the lair of a spider: Beau Dashington. Enticed by his words of “guest reviewer” and “willing to read really shitty books”, we entered into a dialog that would ultimately change the course of my natural life– and maybe the fate of the world. Please allow me to explain the wonderful book, “The Lair of the White Worm” (circa 1911) written by the renowned author of “Dracula” Bram Stoker.

Where do I start with this steaming pile? I believe it’s best to start with a brief explanation of where Bram Stoker was in life: well after his most famous work – Dracula – and prior to writing The Lair, Stoker had been plagued by financial and health issues. His problems began with a stroke in 1906 and progressively got worse till his death in 1912, a year after his “completion” of The Lair of the White Worm. Knowing this, the book becomes more of a tragedy: a famous author forced to release what I can only assume is a rough draft of a novel. But we are here to trash the book, not the man who wrote it…

I never imagined I’d read the literary equivalent of talking pieces of rough-cut particle board. The characters in this mass of words and chapters are so flat, one dimensional, and stiff, that they could be used to board up windows ahead of a fast approaching storm.

The plot… oh boy, I don’t know if there is one. Here’s what I could piece together: Adam visits England after reconnecting with his long lost uncle and then ignores him for 90% of the story so he can be buddy buddy with his Uncle’s friend. Weird shit happens. Adam goes to the party of a wealthy man who is insane and loves a giant kite– and IMMEDIATELY falls in love with the cousin of a person he met for about 2 hours. Meanwhile an aristocratic woman pursues the rich crazy asshole, and she’s also an antediluvian snake thing. Also everyone is racist.

Need I say more? That is really as short of a plot summary I can give, I genuinely don’t believe I can get it any shorter than that. Shit just happens! There’s this whole bat shit crazy plot line of Edgar Caswall (the rich insane person, that owns a castle, btw) where he has “mesmeric’ powers, something akin to hypnotism, and he uses it to maim and kill… or some shit. Honestly it’s really not clear, but he ultimately kills the cousin of Adam’s love interest. Never has a staring contest been so dangerous! Caswall is never really the main bad guy though; he’s too bland to be good or bad. I mean halfway through the damn story a ton of birds show up and he starts flying a giant kite! The logic being that the kite, in the form of a bird of prey, would scare the other birds away. That’s not a joke, and he spends the rest of the story basically fixated on this dumb ass thing until he goes way off the deep end.

The “worm” in this Gothic novel actually refers to a type of snake/ dragon thing. It’s never really clear which that is, but I got the mental image that it was more of an ancient white giant snake that’s sentient. The snake takes the form of a woman named Arabella, but it’s not very clear if she’s evil or not. Everyone just kinda assumes she is. I find Arabella is actually the most developed character; she has reasons for doing things. Her motivation is to marry into wealth and power, which is about the only clear motivation I could find in the book. She wishes to marry Edgar who wants to marry the woman Adam “loves” and thus Arabella hates Adam and his love, while supporting Edgar. It’s almost coherent.

It’s really incredible to see how calm and relaxed the good guys in this story are even when faced with giant snakes that live in wells under ancient estates. No one in this book really reacts to anything that is said or done. The soul exception is the White Worm, Lady Arabella, who acts impulsively and directly on the things that occur around her. Compare that to the good guys, who can’t even react to a goddamn building blow up! They care so little that they spend less than a page on the subject. It’s as if they’re all on xanax.

Seriously, I believe this book was written in a couple weeks and just published directly without much editing. How can there be so much exposition with so little substance? Ultimately the book is too scatterbrained and unfocused. Which is a shame because the very basic idea of an ancient evil beast hiding out in rural England is interesting. The book is just shit.

Rating this story on my arbitrary scale, I give it 3.4/10.

Edit: It’s been a handful of weeks since I finished the bulk of my review. I was given the wonderful suggestion to include an “honorable” mention for the movie that shares the same name as the book. Like most movies derived from they usually share very little. According to the Rotten tomatoes score, the movie has a 65%. I’m honestly shocked it’s so high! At best the movie is painfully average and seems pretty forgettable. BUT! The one of the executive producers inadvertently lent credit to one of my ideas about the book. Dan Ireland, listed on IMDB as one of the execs, performed a brief interview on the Youtube channel “Trailers from Hell”. He says the book was never finished and written in delirium. Which I fully believe! If you’re curious, here is the trailer.





Merjot, 2020