I finally finished it! This book was very slow to read; drawn-out and overly detailed with very little action to pull the reader along. I give older books some leeway in these things though, and although the Victorian flowery language also made it a bit more tedious, i kind of enjoyed that aspect of it. 
 This is where the famous character of Dracula originated, and i thought he was actually quite a bit scarier than your typical Halloween stiff-caped bloodsucker. He's deceptive and creepily powerful; he can climb down walls like a spider and summon wolves and control his vampire ladies telepathically and turn into various creatures and mist and stuff. But in spite of all that he's pretty cowardly, which is disappointing. He should've taken on the six doughy humans who hunted him down instead of just running away from them. How did he slaughter the Turks single-handedly if he can't even manage six non-fighters? It seems to me like he wanted to be killed by them. He targeted that group specifically, even after they'd started their slow plot against him, and even when they finally confronted him he just gave them the typical bad-guy "how dare you?" speech instead of making any attempt to strike a blow. He could easily kill anyone he wanted to during the nighttime, but all he does is go sipping at ladies' throats instead. 
 Van Helsing wasn't what i was expecting, either. He's a nice old doctor who talks endlessly, and he's super smart but he's not a fighter in any way, and he's never encountered a vampire before. It was interesting that a woman (Mina) also played an important role in this book, and while i got a little tired of hearing about how sweet and kind and smart and perfect she was, it was nice that she wasn't just the damsel in distress. 
 It was interesting and worth reading. There were parts that never made a lot of sense to me (how Jonathan got away in the beginning, what the whole deal with the madman Renfield was), but those will keep me thinking about it, which is a good thing.