Like the monster whose alt-universe career the series charts, the Anno Dracula books shift in form and type and identity, reflecting the era in which they're set, cannily skipping eras and events that would potentially mimic earlier entries. A bloodsoaked epic adventure, a war story, a dark and bloody comedy, and now this assembled patchwork of narratives skipping across three decades. The last Anno Dracula novel was published in 1998, though bits and pieces of Johnny Alucard have appeared as novellas and short stories over the years, that's a long wait for a new entry. It might be a pity that it's not all wholly original material, but Newman's stuff is rereadable anyway.

The first great alt-pop coup is a version of Coppola's Dracula if it was Apocalypse Now, as experienced through the calamitous process of filming the damn thing, a shuffling revisited later when we afforded a brief glimpse of the script for Orson Welle's 'Citizen Dracula.' This sets the tone and the style and the subject for the rest of the book. Ion Popescu, Dracula's young get, flees under cover of the film from Roumania to New York and reinvents himself through ruthless and horrible innovations, before heading to LA as John Alucard where he starts making films. Films about Dracula. He is a revenant who carries the ghost of Dracula and is preparing carefully for his big comeback. Touched by his rise and rise are our vampire heroines, Kate Reed and Genevieve, and he has them marked for his attention.

The narrative, though fragmented, covers a lot of time and space, carrying a great deal of inventiveness and insight in each section or interlude. As usual, real and fictional characters walk on and off, in and out of the story, building the universe and populating the new epoch. Dracula rises, and maybe in the next installment he'll fall again. Being Dracula, he won't be down for long.