Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!
First off, PLEASE VOTE if you’re in the U.S. and haven’t already done so! This midterm cycle will be vital in deciding whether or not we can at least try and rein in the terrible corruption and fascism in our government. If you’re a fellow Coloradan, we have a chance to show the billionaires that shoved a ton of unnecessary, hateful measures onto our ballot who’s boss! Advance Colorado doesn’t have our state’s concerns at heart. Remember to vote No on Amendments 81, 134, and 135 so that immigrants and trans kids don’t suffer unnecessarily.
Here are some resources if you haven’t yet voted:
I’ve been a fan of V.E. Schwab since high school, when I got into the Shades of Magic trilogy and This Savage Song. Though she’s hit-or-miss for me, she’s never been outright bad—I can usually depend on her for something nervy and dramatic. Hence why Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil went straight onto my TBR. I wanted something spooky to read for Halloween, and this delivered my much-needed gay vampire fix. But beyond that, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil might be one of Schwab’s strongest novels to date.
Enjoy this week’s review!
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil – V.E. Schwab
1532. Trapped in a loveless marriage, María yearns for freedom in a society that only sees women as homemakers and mothers. All she wants is to get away—and a mysterious stranger may just have the answer for her.
1827. Set to be pawned off to the next eligible bachelor, Charlotte wants more than from her sheltered, cushy life in London. But when an alluring, mysterious widow gives her a glimpse of a future she could seize, Charlotte leaps at the chance—at her own peril.
2019. Abroad in a new country for college, Alice feels like a fish out of water. She sought an escape from her troubled home life in Scotland, but is coming to regret upturning her life so drastically. But a chance meeting with a violet-haired stranger at a party upends her life forever.
Across time, these three women’s lives will intertwine, bloody and full of longing. But for all of them, the question remains: is the cost of immortality too high?
TW/CW: blood, child death, murder, toxic relationships, misogyny, loss of loved ones, grief, suicide, sexual content
I needed something to read for Halloween, and Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil did the trick! Vampires, lust, drama, romance…and some of the most horrifically toxic lesbians you’ve ever seen.
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil might be one of V.E. Schwab’s strongest novels. Time after time, what draws me back is her enchanting prose; she has such a knack for the perfect metaphors that the story needs to accentuate the drama. A vampire novel was right up her alley, and Schwab dials up the gothic drama to the maximum, and her prose is what truly brought it to life. At the beginning, Schwab does kind of hit you over the head with some of the imagery, but once she eases into the flow of the novel, the momentum never stops. She brought Spain, England, and the East Coast of the U.S. to life with such brilliance, and I felt nothing short of there no matter how much globetrotting the novel did—and there was a lot of it. V.E. Schwab’s prose continues to be truly captivating, and time has only increased her powers.
Juggling three characters and five centuries is no easy task, but if anybody can do it, it’s V.E. Schwab. Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil does a stellar job of that balancing act, developing all three of the central characters at once. I loved exploring each of the three women’s backstories and watching the centuries sculpt them into what they’ve become today. They’re all tangled in this horrific web of abuse and patriarchy, but Schwab does an excellent job of making us empathetic towards their circumstances while never excusing the people (well, vampires) they became. You feel terribly for María when she’s trapped in the confines of the patriarchy, but once she gains such an insatiable lust for power and control, there’s no excusing anything she does past a certain threshold. For Charlotte, it’s trickier—I felt so much for her, especially once she tries to claw her way out from under Sabine’s control. And yet, she was guilty of some of the same toxicity as Sabine, just manifested in different ways against Alice.
Alice was the most sympathetic of the three, and I think she may have been the most well developed as well. Even though we spent centuries with Sabine and Charlotte, I think Schwab took the most care with her story. Her aching story of sisterhood, denial, and fear felt like the strongest emotional component of the whole novel, with her journey into vampirism mirroring how she’s been forced to make a name for herself outside of her family and trauma in Scotland. Without spoiling anything, I loved the role that she played in ending—but not quite resolving—the traumatic entanglements of the three vampires, and her story of carving out her own destiny tugged on my heartstrings in all the right ways.
Sure: Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is about hunger. It’s about desire, it’s about liberation, and it’s about power. It’s a vampire book, after all. But I think at its core, this novel has something so powerful to say about how desire and hunger can plunge people into horrific cycles of trauma. María wanted freedom from the confines of patriarchy, but ended up so desperate for autonomy that she restricted it for everybody else in her life, turning into exactly the kind of dominating, predatory presence that she feared when she becomes Sabine. Charlotte was so focused on not becoming like Sabine that she asserted another kind of domineering control over Alice and her previous lovers. Alice was the one to break the cycle in the end (and I loved the ending scene, without spoiling anything), but she was also so caught up in this notion of shedding her past life that she risked becoming what she wanted to flee in the first place. I think it’s an excellent side of to explore in the common themes that come along with writing about vampires, as well as about queer women and misogyny. Schwab wove it all together nearly seamlessly, creating an incredibly powerful statement on the cyclical nature of trauma, for women and for queer people.
All in all, a top-notch vampire novel full of drama, desire, and hunger. 4.25 stars!
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is a standalone. V.E. Schwab is also the author of several other novels for teens and adults, including The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, the Shades of Magic trilogy (A Darker Shade of Magic, A Gathering of Shadows, and A Conjuring of Light), Gallant, the Villains series (Vicious, Vengeful, and Victorious), and many more.
Today’s song:
That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
