The Frankenstein-Dracula Variation in the Vienna Game of Chess Paperback – 10 Nov. 2011

The book itself is ok but the kindle version is rubbish. All the diagrams are completely unreadable. What happened to proofreading!

The book is entertaining (though some may find this concept corny and distracting) as it includes quotes from Bram Stoker's "Dracula" and Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein." T. Harding had coined the variation's name and he covers it in his Vienna book. The quotes from Shelly's work are not bold text and are close to blending in with the chess content. I've had some nice wins playing the line. One player resigned quickly (move 5) as he was too lazy to defend against the aggressive nature.

The main thing is that the diagrams don't appear, but there are many other ways the lack of formatting ruins this. One other example is that the quotes from the book are supposed to appear in unique fonts but don't.

I do not own any Eric Schiller books, and I never thought I would, having read countless reviews deriding their content in general as being riddled with errors, including misstatements of historical facts, incorrect notation of the moves presented, and even at times mis-assessment of a position by 180 degrees. Nonetheless, I would buy this book for two reasons: 1. What other book is there on the Frankenstein-Dracula variation? True, Alterman Gambit Guide 2 by Quality Chess will cover it in a chapter, and it promises to contain thorough and accurate analysis up to the high standards of Quality Chess publications, but that book is not out yet as of this writing. 2. I am in love with the idea of annotating the moves of this variation with quotations from the original novels Frankenstein and Dracula. What could better describe 10. Nxa8 than "I must commence a destructive and almost endless journey across the mountainous ices of the ocean, amidst cold that few of the inhabits could long endure, and which I, a native of a genial and sunny climate, could not hope to survive."?(Frankenstein) My review is based on the "look inside" feature. I can't speak to the depth or accuracy of the analysis, but I want the book anyway.*** Update: I purchased the book - as to be expected, its value is primarily for entertainment, not so much analysis (there are only 30 or so very scant pages of opening analysis, followed by a poorly organized database dump of lightly annotated games. But for amusement purposes you won't be disappointed.I would say, however, that you should get the print book and not the Kindle version - I did, and the formatting kills about 80% of the value, since everything is in the same typeface, and therefore you can't flip to a random page and quickly spot a quote from Frankenstein or Dracula, which is most of the fun.