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The Vampire Count of Monte Cristo


C.T. Phipps

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I wouldn't have a problem with writing monster stories in certain time eras and being inspired by great literary work, but just adding in a few [insert whatever supernatural creature is cool at the moment] to the actual story loved by many seems lazy to me, i'm going to take your word for it and believe some of these books are super fun, they probably are but they're still lazy; i won't say they are terrible because I've never read any and i think in different mediums they might be pretty good but in the medium of literature where they are essentially just taking an old public domain classic and adding in a few things i can't really shake off this feeling that its lazy and reaping the rewards of much better writers whilst simultaneously ruining (for some) what is a beloved classic to them.

It's a valid concern and I wasn't too enthusiastic about the concept myself, initially. I've also heard some of mash-up books are terrible--even the so-called good ones (I disliked the aforementioned P&P&Z strongly). Part of the reason I liked this one was because it felt like a really well-done edited version (with well-written scenes that supplied the information from "cut" scenes), making it a decent abridged version of the novel and all the in-jokes which I mentioned. I can't speak of whether or not it's easier or harder to make a novel this way or the like.

I'm not saying it's a must-read but I'm saying I think fans of the original (and vampire fiction fans) will enjoy it.

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Mr. Phippes,

I object to shoehorning vampires, zombies, and other "creatures of the night" while using the existing texts, that happen to be out of copyright, to make a quick buck.

I'm glad your telepathic abilities have provided you knowledge of Mister Baugh's motivations.

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Hmm... This thread has potential.



I don't really give a fuck about disrespecting a book, or not remaining faithful to a great work of art, or whatever bullshit people loose their shit over. If this book is really entertaining, then I don't see any problem with reading it.


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I've never felt compelled to read these type of books, but I can honestly say I don't understand the vitriol against them. I mean, who really cares if they are written? Perhaps they get younger people to read the source material, I don't know. But who gives a flying fuck if someone takes something from the public domain and messes about with it. The authors don't, they are dead.

Let them reap the rewards of long dead authors. What does it matter? It will neither diminish the value of the original, nor will it light nuns on fire, so why bother building up the hate? Seems like too much work to me.

I don't disagree with this idea, that the authors could give a shit, being dead and all, but sometimes i feel like young people don't have a chance to write or read the next great work of literary art because they are too busy being captivated by horseshit dressed up as literature...not hatin'...just sayin'

...and as always it's is just this asshole's opinion :smoking:

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I've never felt compelled to read these type of books, but I can honestly say I don't understand the vitriol against them. I mean, who really cares if they are written? Perhaps they get younger people to read the source material, I don't know. But who gives a flying fuck if someone takes something from the public domain and messes about with it. The authors don't, they are dead.

Let them reap the rewards of long dead authors. What does it matter? It will neither diminish the value of the original, nor will it light nuns on fire, so why bother building up the hate? Seems like too much work to me.

i don't hate them, doesn't mean i don't think they're lazy. i also think they'd work better in different mediums, a tv movie of pride and prejudice and zombies might be funny and it would be a collective effort between actors, directors etc but tweaking an old book slightly doesn't really appeal to me. i think its a valid point about younger readers though, i hope some of these would get younger people reading the classics :) but im afraid a lot of the appeal is in the supernatural and that alone.

i love vampires and werewolves and other mythical creatures, just think there should be more original stories with supernatural creatures and not just teen fiction.

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You know, let's let the damn text speak for itself and I'll post an excerpt from it. At least someone will be able to judge for themselves then.

From my copy of "The Vampire Count of Monte Cristo" from my Mobibook.


"We lack the information we need to understand, for the vision of mortal man is limited, ours doubly so because of these prison walls."

"Then you cannot help me," Edmond said with an air of deep dejection.

"I can, but it is something I do not relish doing," the old man replied. "What is hidden to the eyes of mortals is plain to those who are not limited by the constraints of the flesh."

Edmond felt the hairs on his neck rise. The old man's words filled him with a sense of dread he did not understand.

"I have studied many sciences," the Abbé continued, "the occult as well as the mundane. I know the rituals that allow a mortal to speak to angels, elemental spirits, or the shades of the dead. I have not used this knowledge for many years for it is dangerous, imperiling not only the body but one's very soul. I should not even consider it, but if this will give you peace . . ."

"It will!" Edmond said. "Oh, Abbé Faria, this knowledge will bring ease to my mind and soul as nothing else could. Forgive me for asking you to do something you do not want to, but I must know. I must!"

Faria nodded solemnly. "Open my hiding place, then and bring me my chalk."

Edmond pried up the hearthstone and searched until he found a lump of native chalk, doubtless uncovered in the Abbé's tunneling. He brought it to Faria who had him sit in the center of the room. The old man then drew a circle around the two of them, inscribing arcane symbols around its edge. At last he sat next to Edmond, placed his crude lamp on the floor between them and lit it.

"It is far too dangerous to summon one of the powers and principalities, or an elemental spirit," Faria said. "Such beings are untrustworthy, and even the best of them are dangerous companions for men. We shall take the safer course of summoning a spirit from among the departed. If I call on one who loves you, and whose nature is upright and honest, that is the safest course of action. So dire was the Abbé's tone that Edmond felt fear stir deep inside of him. Childhood stories of spirits and devils, ghosts and vampires filled his brain. Yet his superstitious dread was nothing compared to his burning need to know what lay behind his torment.

"Whom shall you call upon?" he asked.

"I cannot say, for the dead go where they will. I can offer the invitation but I cannot choose which of the myriad shades will answer."

The Abbé lit the lamp, closed his eyes and began to chant. After a few moments the cell grew both colder and darker and Edmond caught shadows moving in ways the flickering of the flame could not account for. It seemed to him that the small chamber was filled with a number of presences, but he was never able to see them save for an instant and from the corner of his eye, shadows that no solid object in the room had cast. There came a sudden gust of wind that chilled him to the marrow and extinguished the light. He moved to strike the flints but Faria stopped him with a gesture and indicated the smoke from the lamp which had taken on its own glow. As he watched, the smoke expanded, becoming both brighter and more solid. It took on the form and features of a man, and Edmond gasped as he recognized it as a likeness of his father.

"Edmond," the shade said in voice that was as familiar to him as his own.

"Father?" he cried. "Oh, Father, how can it be you? Does this mean that you have died?"

"Edmond," the shade replied. "My body was frail. When you were taken to the Château d'If we were told that you were a traitor to the crown."

"I am innocent, Father!" Edmond cried. "I swear it to you!"

"I never doubted it. Nor did Monsieur Morrel for he often visited the Deputy Prosecutor to plead for your release. He and Mercédès tried to comfort me and he would often leave coins in a little cloth purse on my hearth. Alas, even their kindness was not enough to restore my broken spirit. The same day we heard that you had had died in the Château d'If, my heart beat for the last time."

"Oh, Father," Edmond said, his voice choking. "I am not dead; it was a lie. Oh, my poor father."

"Monsieur Dantès," the Abbé said, "we have summoned you here because Edmond has questions. Can you tell us who caused him to be accused and imprisoned, and their motive for doing so?"

"I can," the spirit replied. "They were consumed by envy, and the lust to possess that which they were not meant to have."

"What do you mean?" Edmond asked, struggling to hold back his tears. "What did I have that any man would covet?"

"You were on the verge of being made captain of the Pharaon," the shade said. "There was one who hated you for that. One who knew that, when you became captain, his own position was in jeopardy."

"Danglars?" Edmond asked. "He heard you, my son, during your final conversation with Captain Leclère. He guessed the importance of the packet you brought with you from Elba and wrote the letter denouncing you."

"Danglars," Edmond repeated, and a feeling of hate began to burn in his heart.

"There was another," the shade continued, "one who desired Mercédès. When he saw how great her love for you was, he learned to hate you."

"Fernand!"

"They conspired against you. Danglars wrote the letter, but it was Fernand who delivered it, and it was Fernand who was there to comfort your fiancée when you were taken."

"The devils!"

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Mr. Phippes,

Did the "author" use Dumas text and add in a few new vampire parts or did he write an entirely new work based on Dumas' outline and story?

The story starts identically then by the Chauteau D'if becomes the latter with only "recreations" of scenes as you might have Mercedes and Edmond talk later but he's always a vampire versus the original text where he's a human. They might be talking about the same thing (the duel with Albert) and be in the same room but the scenes are not copy and paste but rewritten in the new context. Edmond thinking about blood and/or how he's an inhuman monster who has left his past behind all the while Mercedes is talking.

If that means anything.

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Another bit from the book, just because I feel like people actually might know what the book is about now. After the Abbe has summoned Edmond's father's spirit, he regrets creating a passion for vengeance in him and tries to teach Edmond other things but the latter wants to know about sorcery most of all. The Abbe refuses to teach it to Edmond until a later scene when he's sick.

"Thank you," said Abbé, shivering as though his veins were filled with ice. "When the attack comes it shall probably paralyze me, making me as motionless as a corpse. If that does not happen, it will take the form of violent convulsions, causing me to foam at the mouth, and cry out loudly. Take care my cries are not heard."

"I will," Edmond said. "But how am I to help you?"

"Do you recall the details of the magic circle I drew to summon your father's shade?"

"Yes."

"The hidden scroll holds an image of that circle and the cabalistic signs that border it. I want you to place me in the center of the room and draw it on the floor in exacting detail. Take care to be inside the circle before you close it."

"I do not remember the words you chanted," Edmond said.

"The words are written on the scroll. As you read it, you will see the place where the name of the spirit summoned is to be spoken. I called on any spirit friendly to Edmond Dantès but you must call on one of the higher powers, Suriel, the Angel of Healing. Perhaps he can save me."

"Perhaps?" Edmond asked his voice thick with grief.

"Help! Help!" the Abbé cried, "I. . . I die. . ."

The fit was so sudden and violent that the Abbé was unable to complete the sentence. A violent convulsion shook his frame, his eyes bulged from their sockets, he foamed at the mouth, dashed himself about, and uttered the most heart rending cries. Edmond prevented him from being heard by covering Faria's head with the blanket. The fit lasted two hours; then the Abbé fell back, doubled up in one last convulsion, and became as rigid as a corpse. Edmond moved him to the center of the room and made the preparations with trembling hands. He finished the circle, lit the lamp, and opened the scroll.

The words for the spell were written in Faria's small, neat hand, and at the bottom of the page he found a list of the names of the entities that it could be used to summon. He scanned the list, noting the names of Achaiah, the Angel of Patience, Rachmiel, the Angel of Compassion, Raphael, the Angel of Knowledge and of Science, and Suriel, the Angel of Healing. He was about to begin the chant when he read the next name on the list: Zathael, the Angel of Vengeance.


You can guess what Dantes does later with this information.
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But a great many kids, rocksniffer, are not reading the classics in any case.



I don't know. I am the first person to get up in arms if a book is disrespected, but I seem to care very little about this. My parents were pretty relaxed, but I remember other parents deriding their kids attachment of fantasy, thinking that it would not help them in any way. But reading is good, with perhaps a few exceptions, in almost every way. There was a time when admitting to reading fantasy carried a far greater stigma than it does now. So I suppose I don't judge.



And you should stop putting the quotes in. I have to be honest, they will sway no one. I'm more inclined to pass it by having seen it now.


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I find those "adaptations" a lazy way to make cash off public-domain works, written by the untalented and unoriginal.

They blemish the original work, for they are not "retellings", they have no ambition or scope beyond ripping a famous work, adding some flavour of the month urban fiction monster, and getting money. I have a hundredth more contempt toward them than I have towards fan-fiction.

This. QFT.

The blog, the book, the movie Julie & Julia pops into my head. Julia Child despised what Julie Powell did, because she saw it as JP riding on the coattails of the decades of her hard work (or so I've seen in reports from those close to her, I don't think she actually graced the work with a public statement).

I did see this:

Child and Powell never met, but Child did have a comment about her exploits:

Judith Jones, senior editor and vice president at Alfred A. Knopf, and Child's editor and friend, shared Child's sentiments with Publisher's Weekly:

"Julia said, 'I don't think she's a serious cook.' ... Flinging around four-letter words when cooking isn't attractive, to me or Julia," Jones said. "She didn't want to endorse it. What came through on the blog was somebody who was doing it almost for the sake of a stunt."

And these books are just stunts, written by people riding the coattails of others. Read them if you wish, but as Rocksniffer said, life is too short to waste on trash, so look at one and don't bother with any others.

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If this is a new work of fiction rather than the orginal text with a few new parts shoehorned in, it's a different cup of tea.

Yeah, it's kind of hard to classify. It's why I used the term mash-up and remake interchangeably.

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I should jump on one statement that bothers me, thought it triggers me for another reason.



The notion that the originals are blemished by these cheap copies. If they are indeed so easily blemished then they are not worth the fucking paper they are printed on. The original should live or die on its own. If it does not then it no longer has a place.



This reminds me of so many of the hardcore religious nuts that have come down through the years claiming that they need to protect gods word, or his legacy, or his fucking name, so that it is not tarnished by blasphemers. And in the back of my mind I have always thought to myself, is your own faith so weak? Does God need you to protect him? Or is this simply a means of control?


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But a great many kids, rocksniffer, are not reading the classics in any case.

I don't know. I am the first person to get up in arms if a book is disrespected, but I seem to care very little about this. My parents were pretty relaxed, but I remember other parents deriding their kids attachment of fantasy, thinking that it would not help them in any way. But reading is good, with perhaps a few exceptions, in almost every way. There was a time when admitting to reading fantasy carried a far greater stigma than it does now. So I suppose I don't judge.

And you should stop putting the quotes in. I have to be honest, they will sway no one. I'm more inclined to pass it by having seen it now.

This is an opening I respect and I understand. I also largely share it.

As for the quotes bit, I personally would read it "unspoiled" but I got a little tired of everyone talking about it without having even read a paragraph of it so I thought I'd share some of it.

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Artmail, they blemish the original pieces of work the same way a hideous boil blemishes a person's face. The blemish will likely be temporary, because the books are just a passing fad, and won't leave a permanent scar, but they are ugly things to look at.



I imagine it's people who hate Pride and Prejudice who buy the vampire and zombie versions of the books, not people who love Jane Austen's work. I'm not certain if the fans of Dumas are as serious about Monte Cristo, but surely most of the purchasers are buying it to get a laugh, are they not? There's a blemish on the original right there.


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Artmail, they blemish the original pieces of work the same way a hideous boil blemishes a person's face. The blemish will likely be temporary, because the books are just a passing fad, and won't leave a permanent scar, but they are ugly things to look at.

I imagine it's people who hate Pride and Prejudice who buy the vampire and zombie versions of the books, not people who love Jane Austen's work. I'm not certain if the fans of Dumas are as serious about Monte Cristo, but surely most of the purchasers are buying it to get a laugh, are they not? There's a blemish on the original right there.

That sucks for them, then. The book more or less drips with, "This is an awesome-awesome book."

About the only difference is Dumas' novel is, "Revenge is awesome"

While the VCOMC is more, "Vengeance really destroys your life."

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