The Jewel of Seven Stars

A little bit different of a story.

In Bram Stoker's The Jewel of Seven Stars, which is a cool book, by the way, we still get a mummy queen possession romanced angst story with ancient betrayals and secret rites involved.

And it's happening to an unsuspecting man who can't help but be so observant and so horny.

But this time, he also adds in the element of adventure and exciting temple expeditions and tomb raiding.

I lit two candles and, taking one in each hand, hurried back to the hall where I had left, as I had supposed, Margaret.

Her body was not there, but on the spot where I had laid her was Queen Tira's bridal robe, and surrounding it, the girdle of wondrous gems.

Where the heart had been lay the jewel of seven stars, sick at heart, and with a terror which has no light in the black, impenetrable smoke.

I went down into the cavern.

Yeah.

Um, and then, uh, Stoker's version is The Jewel of the Seven Stars from 1903.

Never read any of those, though I have seen the Tales from the Dark Side.

I'd imagine that is pretty significantly altered in the adaptation.

Um, he did write 10 more books after Dracula, I think.

He wrote The Jewel of the Seven Stars and The Lair of the White Worm, which are the two that probably were a little bit more successful than-

Okay

... others that he'd written.

Because if we want to understand how Bram Stoker created Dracula, maybe we need to stop looking at only Dracula.

What happens when you read everything else? The Snake's Pass, The Mystery of the Sea, Jewel of Seven Stars, Lady of the Shroud, Lair of the White Worm.

Do the same ideas keep appearing?

And that question is particularly interesting to me because of Powers of Darkness.

There's the disturbed dreams theme, which is really strong.

And that's a very important part of Dracula, where unfortunates like Lucy Westenra have these terrible dreams as they sink into vampirism.

There's gender bending, both in, say, The Jewel of Seven Stars, where Queen Tara wants all the privileges of masculinity, dresses as a man.

Same as the character of Stephen in The Man.

And, uh, Florence and Bram would go to the Wilde's house, and the mother would keep everyone enthralled with old, dark tales of the Celtic Knights.

And then the father would take the young men downstairs for brandy and cigars, and he would show off his stolen Egyptian mummy and all the other artifacts, and regale them with tales Uh, this, what he learned from them became one of his novels, The Jewel of the Seven Stars.

Hmm.

And then he received, all of a sudden he received this thing from Henry Irving because he, Bram was also an unpaid drama critic.

There was a couple more after Dracula that was sort of gothic-y.

What was it? Jewel of the Seven Stars, which is based on...

Well, it started the mummy genre.

It has this mummy in it called Terra, T-E-R-A.