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Book Review: The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gómez
Summary:
A young Black girl escapes slavery in the 1850s United States. When she grows up, she is made into a vampire with her consent. We see her immortal life and her perspective of the US through an imagined 2050.
Review:
The author herself stated in a recent article that she wrote this because she wanted “to see a lesbian of color embark on the adventure of eternal life.” This was something that was hard to find in 1991 when it first came out, and is only a little easier to find even now. There’s more of a twist to this, though, than a Black lesbian vampire.
How vampires work in this story is perhaps the most unique take I’ve read. They usually glamor their sources of blood while they are asleep. They come into their dreams and see something they wish for and leave something behind to help. An example is one time a teenager is hoping to do well on a test, so Gilda clarifies some of his mathematics homework for him. They also don’t use their teeth to draw blood but rather make a slice with a fingernail and then heal the wound magically without a trace. Most fascinatingly, these vampires must always keep their “home earth” close to themselves, or they will lose their powers. They must take large pallets of dirt from their home and sew it into their blankets, clothes, and shoes. One complain I have is that it was unclear to me if this dirt was from where they grew up or from where they were turned. It seems sometimes it’s one and sometimes the other. They also are weakened by all water, not just holy water.
Each of the chapter is set in a different year and place in Gilda’s life. It reads almost like a series of interconnected short stories more than a novel. I was reticent to ever stop in he middle of a chapter. I felt compelled to read each in its entirety in one sitting. This blipping in and out of Gilda’s life helps give the reader a sense of the jarringness of immortality. We just get to know a human, and then they’re gone. But that’s how it is for Gilda too.
This is not an erotic book. Gilda’s maker and another vampire named Bird (who also helps make her) are a couple when we first meet them. Gilda repeatedly becomes infatuated with women, both human and vampire, throughout the book. But we only rarely see any sexual interactions. I’m including even kissing here. The book is less about the sexuality and more about the community formed by queer people, often necessarily in the shadows. The often unrequited yearning. Gilda also has a vampiric encounter with a man that some readers view as sexual. I didn’t read it that way myself. I viewed it as a purely vampiric encounter. But you might feel differently.
Gilda’s perspective as a Black woman is ever-present, as it should be. She is othered by white society even when they don’t sense her vampire nature because of her blackness. But she also finds belonging in a variety of Black communities ranging from rural activists to singing nightclubs. Gilda also later in the book is left wondering how humans can feel such atrocities as slavery are so far in the past when for her it was a blink of an eye. An artful way of getting the reader to question how much time and distance is really between us and our history.
Overall, this is a unique take on vampire lore that centers a Black lesbian. It delivers both fantastic historic fiction and Afrofuturism in the same read. An engaging read for lovers of either.
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4 out of 5 stars
Length: 252 pages – average but on the shorter side
Source: Library
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Book Review: A Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson
Summary:
You saved my life when I was on the brink of death, and I became your vampire bride. But we’ve lived many centuries past those days in Romania. I think your way of loving might be more than I can bear.
Review:
I picked this up because I heard that in spite of the husband/wife part of the summary that there’s a significant sapphic subplot. I’m not sure I’d call it significant so much as being one of the three parts of the book.
It’s written as a letter from the vampire bride Constanta to her vampire husband. In the first part, we learn how Constanta became a vampire and her early years with him. In the second, he adds a second wife, Magdalena. But this is true polyamory in that everyone sleeps with everyone. In the third part, he adds a husband, Alexi. Again, everyone has sex with everyone, although this is not the amicable threesome (and sometimes twosomes in both combinations) it once was. It’s clear that while the sire is fine with Magdalena and Alexi sleeping together, he’s less ok with Constanta and Alexi.
But what is the plot of the book? It’s basically Constanta realizing over time just how cruel her husband is and trying to decide if she should try to escape. The most unique part of this was the second part where Magdalena and Constanta both feel an immediate attraction to each other and then proceed to form a romantic bond as their husband perpetually abandons them for his research. I don’t say this just because it’s sapphic but rather because I think polyamory as opposed to polygamy has less representation in literature. Not that either have a lot.
I want to be clear this is not erotica. If it wasn’t for all the vampire feeding blood, I’d say it could probably pull off a PG13 rating for the sexual content. A lot occurs off-screen or is only vaguely described. There’s really only one scene that I think might warrant an R rating for the sex. This in fact is not a story about sex but one about many centuries of abuse and how the persons being victimized finally break free. The thing is…I was here for romance. And I wouldn’t say that’s what this is.
The language is overwrought in a self-aware way. Constanta is old world. These are her words. She sounds like an 1800s teenager who takes everything far too seriously and has some hilarious turns of phrase. I’m sure some readers would read this as gorgeous as opposed to silly. When I say overwrought 1800s language, I’m sure you can tell how well that will work for you.
While the book engaged me enough to finish it, here wasn’t enough unique about it to make me rate it above average. I wanted more of what makes this vampire bride different and less of the usual tropes. But if you’re a person who loves Old Europe style vampires and wants a dash of f/f love and polyamory in there, then this will likely work quite well for you.
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3 out of 5 stars
Length: 248 pages – average but on the shorter side
Source: Library
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Book Review: The Dark Between the Trees by Fiona Barnett
Summary:
Northern England’s Moresby Wood. The locals call it an unnatural place of witchcraft where the devil walks by moonlight. Five women head into it on a historian’s academic expedition to discover what happened to a unit of 17 Parliamentarian soldiers in 1643. Only 2 soldiers survived the wood. How many women will?
Review:
This is a book for those steeped in academia who want the mystery to remain a mystery.
The telling alternates between the perspective of the five modern day women and the 17 soldiers in 1643. I liked how the journeys of the two groups paralleled each other while having enough different things occurring to remain engaging. But I never felt like I truly got to know any one character in a well-rounded way. They all felt like two-dimensional drawings. I don’t mind this in a traditional horror/thriller. The point isn’t the characters. But this story struck me as a less traditional mystery that remains unsolved. It’s not like Scream or Cabin in the Woods. It takes itself seriously and, thus, my standards for characterization are higher and remain unmet.
I like the monster in the woods. It has a cool name – the Corrigal. It’s deliciously creepy. But it’s essentially dropped in the last few chapters as a red herring. That would be fine if something scarier replaced it. But it doesn’t.
As someone who spent many years in academia, this book reads like a speculative wish fulfillment. The lead historian is a woman who others in her department think is wrongfully obsessed with the woods. She struggles to win awards when the man in her department does. It took her years to fund this trip. The narrative tells us this over and over again. The book tries to show us that the historian was right. If a bit cruel to her postdoc student. But I was left feeling like this was a speculative exploration of everything wrong with academia without the text being self-aware that this is what it was doing.
I’ve categorized it a mystery, because to me it wasn’t thrilling or horrific. It was a puzzle the women set out to solve and fail to do so in any satisfying way. The bit of chills that built in the beginning fizzle by the end.
If you enjoy 1600s history interspersed with modern day academics flailing helplessly about in the woods and don’t mind an unresolved mystery, then this will be a great match for you.
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3 out of 5 stars
Length: 304 pages – average but on the longer side
Source: NetGalley
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Announcement: Shop My Halloween Notebooks
For the past few months, I’ve been designing and selling blank, lined notebooks. Each has 100 sheets (200 pages) and is a handy carry size of 6″ wide x 9″ high (slightly larger than A5 size at 152.4mm x 228.6mm). One notebook costs just $5.99.
For most of them, I find vintage art in the public domain then edit and transform it in various combinations into notebook covers. But sometimes I draw the art myself or use public domain images to illustrate a text phrase.
I love Halloween, so to celebrate, I created a line of Halloween themed vintage notebooks.
There’s my series of four rooster themed ones, largely running off of puns and parodies.
Then there’s my series of vintage greeting card inspired Halloween notebooks.
Finally, there’s my vintage style scares series.
I hope you’ve enjoyed getting to see a part of my new notebook adventure. You can browse all of my notebooks, including many non-Halloween ones (like my currently best selling Heart Sutra one) here.
If you have any suggestions or requests for a notebook, drop them in the comments below!
Book Review: Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty
Summary:
Mallory is constantly embroiled in murder cases that only she has the insight to solve. But outside of a classic mystery novel, being surrounded by death makes you a suspect and a social pariah. So when she gets the opportunity to take refuge on a sentient space station, she takes it. Surely the murders will stop if her only company is aliens. But when the station agrees to allow additional human guests, humans and aliens alike begin to die…
Review:
A scifi mystery with creative imaginings of multiple alien species and a queer cast.
My favorite part of this book is the various alien species present on the space station. The Gneiss formed from rocks. They don’t ever really die but hibernate then come back in a new form. They can be pebbles, humanoids, or even shuttles. The Phantasmagore have a symbiont vine growing on their ankles that let them camouflage into their surroundings. The Sundry are a hivemind of bee-like creatures that are mysteriously divided into blue and grey factions. Most interesting is that all alien species evolved to have a symbiont. This is another species that merges with them for a mutually beneficial relationship. Only humans didn’t. Why they don’t have one is one of the mysteries of the book.
In spite of the fact that many of the characters are aliens, this still manages to be a diverse book. Multiple characters are Black, one is Korean-American, and the automatic translator uses human names from around the globe to substitute for alien names that humans couldn’t possibly pronounce. (For reasons like that they can’t vibrate to communicate like the Gneiss do).
The marketing I saw was Agatha Christie in space. The storytelling isn’t comparable. Agatha Christie novels are mostly one pov. Third person from the detective’s perspective. This book uses multiple povs. This annoyed me, because at many times, we the readers know things Mallory doesn’t. It removes a lot of the mystery. We end up just sitting there waiting for her to find out something we already know. And it’s not just switching pov in a seen. There are multiple flashback chapters where we go and see a character’s whole backstory. It’s important for an author to know all this detailed information, but not for the reader to. An example is one character who the military recruits to something. We have a whole chapter of flashback to the military recruiting her. Then later Mallory finds out. We didn’t need this chapter about the recruitment. We could have just seen Mallory find it out. More suspense and less dead time (pun intended) waiting for flashbacks to be over. While I liked the story itself, the style of telling it wasn’t for me.
The queer content is that Mallory is bisexual. Another character is a trans gay guy. Another minor character is gay. I appreciate that these identities are not a big deal and mentioned in passing like a character’s hair color. I was a little uncomfortable with one scene with the trans character, Phineas. His brother is trying to reassure him that they’re definitely related. For some reason, the way he reassures him of this is to say his deadname and explain why their father gave him that name. It just seemed like a completely unnecessary use of the deadname to me. (Could have just said…dad named you what he did because of X and that’s why he’s definitely your dad too). I don’t mind characters making mistakes. But it would have been nice to have established Phineas doesn’t mind hearing his deadname. Or to have his brother realize his mistake and apologize.
Recommended for mystery readers who like scifi and multiple povs.
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3 out of 5 stars
Length: 336 pages – average but on the longer side
Source: NetGalley
Buy It (Amazon or Bookshop.org)
This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Opinions of a Wolf 