When Bram Stoker died in 1912, commentators of the time suggested that the Irish author would likely be remembered, if he was remembered at all, for his association with the great stage actor Sir Henry Irving. Stoker managed Irving’s Lyceum Theatre in London, and it is one of the ironies of literary history that Dracula achieved its fame only when it was adapted for the cinema, the medium that eclipsed both of Stoker’s beloved art forms and made the author a posthumous celebrity.

That accrued celebrity has a lot to do with the publication of Dracula: The Un-Dead, a sequel to the original novel that also bears the Stoker name. Montreal-born Dacre Stoker is a great-grandnephew of Bram’s and a former pentathlete, attributes that apparently qualify him to pen, with writer and Dracula expert Ian Holt, an “official” sequel to the Gothic classic.

Set in 1912, a quarter century after Dracula was finally put to rest in Transylvania by Dr. Van Helsing and his band of fearless vampire killers, Dracula: The Un-Dead quickly brings readers up to speed with the survivors of the battle with the iconic count.

Time has not been kind to Dr. Jack Seward, Van Helsing’s acolyte. Addicted to morphine, his career in ruins, Seward is obsessed with stamping out the last traces of evil left behind by Dracula’s visit to England. Jonathan Harker, the once idealistic lawyer who was trapped in Dracula’s Transylvania castle in the original novel, is now a hopeless alcoholic, destroyed by the knowledge that his wife Mina almost chose Dracula as a life partner in Harker’s absence. Van Helsing is a frail old man and Arthur Holmwood has devoted his life to forgetting the night that he and his allies were forced to stake and behead Holmwood’s fiancée.

Mina, on the other hand, has not aged at all, a fact not lost on her embittered husband. She has also retained a youthful vitality that, given her advancing age, has taken on an almost ghoulish quality, not surprising given that Mina was forced to drink some of Dracula’s blood before he was dispatched. Some of that vitality has been passed on to Mina and Jonathan’s rebellious son, Quincey, named after the jaunty Texan who died in the final battle with Dracula.

Personal problems notwithstanding, the fallen band of heroes has more pressing issues to deal with. Dr. Seward is hot on the trail of a conspiracy that involves the murders of Jack the Ripper, the infamous 16th-century murderess Countess Elizabeth Báthory, and the possible resurrection of the count himself. Just when the final pieces of proof seem to fall in his lap, Seward is viciously murdered, the first in a series of gruesome killings that seem to target Dracula’s enemies.

The action is high-spirited and fast, with short chapters propelling the multi-pronged plot to the next revelation or fight scene. Bram Stoker himself shows up, befuddled by his lack of artistic success and making a last stab at mounting a dramatized production of his novel.

It’s all good fun, so long as you don’t pay attention to the language and characterization, which are equally atrocious. No cliché seems to have been left untapped. The text overflows with such sentences as “Quincey’s blood boiled as he raced along Bonhay Road,” and if a character is frightened you can be sure that his or her blood will “turn to ice.” A smile “bring[s] warmth to the coldest heart,” an empty house feels “like a tomb,” and rainfall is described as a “torrential downpour.”

The dialogue isn’t much better. Mina opines that “evil comes in shades of grey, not black and white,” while the villains declare their intentions by voicing their evil plans in baroque soliloquies. A novel that throws between two covers Dracula, Countess Báthory, Jack the Ripper, Bram Stoker, the first airplane flight across the English Channel, and the launch of the Titanic (it is 1912 after all) is probably not supposed to be enjoyed for its keen attention to language. However, readers will likely wish that the authors had erred on the side of plainness when choosing phrases to rocket the plot forward.

The novel contains at least half a dozen good set pieces and features plenty of blood and decapitation for the gore hounds. Readers may have to look past a few too many plot holes and lucky coincidences to tag along with the elaborate, fun story, but those who invest the requisite suspension of disbelief in the proceedings will be rewarded with a couple of evenings’ worth of harmless thrills.

On the other hand, those hoping for a continuation of the haunting, elegant prose of that underappreciated Victorian Irishman may have to wait for another generation or two of Stokers to be born.