A classic gothic romance filled with absolutely ridiculous things. 
 I love looking through the touchstones of horror and seeing what people have forgotten or never used. That's why I enjoyed my read-through of Dracula so much. Having seen the musical, I was equally surprised and delighted by going through the novel and viewing its craziness. 
 The musical sets the plot pretty quick as "young opera singer is pursued by masked, deformed genius." The novel takes a different tack. Our singer Christine, her would-be boy toy Raoul the lovestruck noble, and Erik the Phantom quickly learn of the dark triangle that involves them all, even if it takes Raoul a while more than most to figure out what's going on. The rest of the cast? 
 Almost everyone else in this damn book thinks it's a romantic comedy. 
 Imagine an 80's sex comedy where two people know that Jason Voorhees is out there while the rest do pratfalls, gossip, and vaudeville humor. Even as the bodies pile up, the denizens of the Paris Opera House act in entertainingly ludicrous ways. 
 Well, mostly. Something amazing and horrifying happens on stage halfway through the book. Surprise! Alarm! Then the next chapter focuses on people who heard from fourth-hand sources that one of the managers barricaded themselves in their office and screamed for a safety pin. Murder, magic, and kidnapping are all around, but everyone ignores that because 
 they must get to the bottom of this safety pin shit. 
 Erik, the deformed man who lives in the secret parts of the Opera House, is fascinating. He's got a ridiculously detailed globe-trotting origin and the ingenuity of a homicidal Wile E. Coyote. 
 Still, there's one figure he fears in the labyrinth below the Opera House. There's a cloaked shadow in a felt hat whom Erik avoids, a man with arrest powers who directly aids the managers, someone's whose identity is a state secret. 
 We never learn anything else about that guy, so get used to disappointment. 
 Also, the Phantom of the Opera goes grocery shopping in broad daylight wearing Groucho glasses. This is a Thing That Happens. 
 Every the narrator doesn't stay serious. Sometimes you get scenes that are chilling, such as when Christine pours out her heart to Raoul about how the Phantom terrifies her and you know for a fact that Mr. Opera Ghost is listening. Other times, the narration snarks like a French Douglas Adams. 
 And it's fun. 
 I really enjoyed going through this. It's a whole lot of crazy things, but (with the exception of the safety pin mishagosh, it is never boring.