The Jewel of Seven Stars by Bram StokerMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
We all know Bram Stoker as the author of Dracula. I knew that he had written other books and decided that Halloween 2021 would be a fine time to try one of them out. I'm no stranger to Mummy tales, having read works as diverse as Curse of the Kings by Victoria Holt, The Mummy by Anne Rice, and the short story Lost in a Pyramid or the Mummy's Curse by Louisa May Alcott. This one has a slightly different twist.
The pace of the story is slow and there is a lot of agonizing done by the narrator, Malcom Ross. The poor guy is deeply in love and is both concerned and thrilled when his lady love summons him in the middle of the night because she needs a strong shoulder to lean upon. Her father, an eccentric Egyptologist, has been injured and collapsed in their home. He seems to be in a coma of some kind, although there is no evidence of a head injury. When Ross arrives, a doctor and the police are summoned, with our man making sure that they are suitable. Since he is a well known lawyer, everyone falls in with his plans. However, things get weird(er). Mr. Trelawny has left a letter stating that if weirdness should happen, he is not to be removed from his room full of Egyptian curios and that none of those antiquities should be removed. His lawyer is consulted, only to tell them they must do things the great man's way. So there are many odd, vague goings on. Interestingly, there are two endings given. I didn't find either of them exceptionally satisfying, but given my druthers, I'd pick the happier of the two.
The novel seemed to me to be a bit like Frankenstein, with everyone willing to comply with Trelawny's experiment without really wondering if it was a good idea. I also thought about H. Rider Haggard's fiction, with his penchant for the mysterious, African settings, and Victorian “gentlemen" despoiling foreign countries to build their collections. The mysterious female mummy reminded me of Haggard's Ayesha, star of his novel She.
I can definitely see why this novel didn't achieve the same level of fame as Dracula. It's a bit nebulous concerning what is exactly going on and Stoker drags it on longer than necessary.
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