New “Ravenloft” novel

[Isolde]

Let's translate this into something you might actually want to read...

"A party of Muppets must brave the horrors of Cravenloft in this official Dungeons & Dragons novel!

Five strangers armed with steel and magic awaken in a mist-shrouded land, with no memory of how they arrived: Piggy, a prideful pig wizard; Animal, a crazed barbarian; Pepe, an embittered prawn paladin; Sam, a sardonic eagle cleric; and Kermit, a sunny frog artificer.

this would be funny and fun to read and watch.

[Drinnik Shoehorn]

I read a review that said the book is basically WotC trying to sell more copies of Curse of Strahd.

That it’s not good compared to what’s come before and is just bland.

Which could describe any 5e product since 2018.

[Igor the Henchman]

Even the folks on the Curse of Strahd subreddit (who are hardly 5E contrarians) seem to be mostly underwhelmed by the book.

[Le Noir Faineant]

It was more Dracula, Frankenstein etc for us, Faineant.
For me at least, it was not Anne Rice with the sexualized, seductive vampires.

Anne Rice was HUGE, back in the day, though, even if, in retrospect, it's basically the 1980s version of "Twilight" or "Outlander". Admittedly, I only ever read one book by her:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/313 ... he_Vampire

"Vittorio the Vampire" is pretty okay - at least in my memry. One of the rare cases of medieval Fantasy Horror before more modern writers like Karen Maitland came around.

As to what got me interested in "Classic Horror" à la Ravenloft, I've actually been thinking about this, lately. I first read "Dracula" in 1998, at fifteen, and really liked it. I don't think I watched especially the Coppola movie until I was an adult, though. -- I think, for me personally, it's somewhere between "Vampire Hunter D", and "The Phantom of the Opera" - the novel, not the musical. I'm still keeping that old brown Penguin book around. I don't remember what my first experience with Horror RPGs was, though, or why I got so interested in them, specifically...

Even the folks on the Curse of Strahd subreddit (who are hardly 5E contrarians) seem to be mostly underwhelmed by the book.

This is what has me worried, as well: This is the writer's audience; it doesn't get much closer than that. And folks are mostly "positively indifferent" to their experience, I guess one could say. I'd rather finally buy that strange coffin-shaped gamebox than reading the novel, at this point, I'm afraid. From what I gather, the guys at Red Moon Roleplaying probably gave us the definite "entertainment" version of Ravenloft 5e a few years ago, already...