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Geek Girl Authority
16 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Geek Girl Authority
Book Review: BURY OUR BONES IN THE MIDNIGHT SOIL
Thank you to Tor Books for sending me a copy of Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil in exchange for an honest review. María, Charlotte and Alice are three women separated by centuries but united by longing, defiance and a burning desire for freedom. In 16th-century Spain, María marries into wealth to gain freedom, only to find herself trapped again until a mysterious widow offers her a dangerous escape. In 19th-century London, Charlotte is exiled for loving the wrong person, until another enigmatic widow reveals a hidden legacy and a new path forward. And in 2019 Boston, Alice awakens as a vampire after a one-night stand, launching her on a desperate quest for answers – and for the woman who turned her life upside down. RELATED: New Release Radar: New Books Coming Out On June 10 Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil Book Review Spanning centuries and continents, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is a dark, addictive fever dream. V.E. Schwab's newest book is meant to be savored, even if you want to devour it. While Schwab engages in plenty of modern vampire tropes, this isn't a romantic story. Instead, it's about obsession, power and a hunger for more. She draws on clear inspiration from Interview with the Vampire . As a result, this is a dark, twisted tale full of morally grey and even downright evil characters. Each must address the same questions: If eternity turns you into something inhuman, can you still be good? Or does survival mean surrendering to the monster within? RELATED: Top 10 Vampires From Books, TV and Film It's the different character studies that make Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil so powerful. María, Charlotte and Alice's stories echo each other in a fierce exploration of power, survival and the cost of choosing yourself. Each woman begins the narrative shackled by society, queer women searching for love, recognition and wholeness in a world that denies their existence. In spite of these similarities, however, their stories never get repetitive. Each woman's differences make her stand out from the rest. María is sympathetic, ambitious and ruthless. As the one who lives as a vampire the longest, her transformation is fascinating to watch. Charlotte is relatable but also frustrating, and will likely be the most divisive of the three narrators. And Alice is sweet, with a fierceness hidden beneath her grief. All three stories intertwine with themes of grief, longing and the desire for control. RELATED: 8 Books to Read for Pride 2025 and Beyond As a whole, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is another stunning work from V.E. Schwab. It's full of female rage and women who refuse to be tamed. Read this one for a story of yearning and hunger that will stay with you long after you finish. Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is out now and available from your local independent bookstore or TW: alcohol, animal death, blood, body horror, car accident, child death, classism, confinement, death, death of a parent, domestic abuse, drug use, emotional abuse, fire/fire injury, gaslighting, gore, grief, homophobia, injury/injury detail, lesbophobia, mental illness, misogyny, murder, panic attacks/disorders, physical abuse, rape, sexism, sexual harrasment/assault, sexual content, suicide/suicidal thoughts, stalking, torture, toxic relationship, violence, war Book Review: THE FRAGILE THREADS OF POWER
Daily Mail
21 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
From bloodsucking vampires to time travelling humanoids; the best Science Fiction out this month: Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab, Kill Them with Kindness by Will Carver, Esperance by Adam Oyebanji
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is available now from the Mail Bookshop Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab (Tor £22, 544pp) Even as they take blood, vampires are the gift that still keep on giving to the genre of dark romance. Now V. E. Schwab's foray into this fertile world has borne ripe and juicy fruit. Her new book is imbued with love, lust and yearning – mostly of the sapphic variety – and her take on hidden desires, hunger and corruption puts it up there with the classics of the genre. From 16th-century Spain to 21st-century America via Venice and London, the plotlines are languorously long, yet strong as sinew and soused in buckets of gore. Three women, three lives and three living deaths – sink your teeth into it and drink deep. Kill Them with Kindness by Will Carver (Orenda Books £9.99, 300pp) It starts with a knockabout dystopian premise: suppose the leaders of the western world decided to consolidate their power by releasing a deadly virus? Then suppose that the immunologist behind it all went rogue and found a bug that made people nice. Overnight, carnivorous chefs would go vegan, tech bros develop a conscience and the world would be transformed by little acts of kindness. Suffice to say, no one would put up with that, either. Carver delights in grimly plausible overlaps with our recent history. It's clever, compelling, funny and it really makes you think: could it yet happen? Or did it happen already? Esperance is available now from the Mail Bookshop Esperance by Adam Oyebanji (Arcadia £10.99, 432pp) Not many books feature time-travelling humanoids that talk like actor George Raft at his most gangsterish. There's humour here and also good, solid plotting – key characteristics of this clever, intricate, hugely enjoyable story that still packs a real punch. People are being drowned with seawater – mysteriously and ruthlessly – in inner-city apartments and grand country mansions alike. After the murderers are a pair of straight-talking cops, a glamorous Amazonian Nigerian with mysterious tech and a charming Bristolian drifter. Linking them is the Esperance, a 19th-century British sailing ship, whose historical business is very much the point of it all and will keep you gripped and leave you furious.
New York Times
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
A Thrilling Lesbian Vampire Novel You'll Want to Sink Your Teeth Into
BURY OUR BONES IN THE MIDNIGHT SOIL, by V.E. Schwab I don't think I'll ever tire of vampires. I do, however, have my preferences. I like my vampires to be old and sexy and inhuman. I like when their immortality is still a kind of death. To me, a vampire should be a little miserable. Living forever sounds awesome until you remember that living is a long slog of repeated maintenance tasks. What is life but a continuous search for sustenance and then dealing with the aftermath of your consumption? So I was pleased by the vampires in V.E. Schwab's new novel, 'Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil.' They are very hungry, and very mad about it. The novel follows three women across three different timelines. In 1530s Spain, María chafes at her family's control over her life. She's a wild child with red hair so bright that no dye or mud they use can cover it. María doesn't want to get married or have children, as is expected of women of her time, but figures if she must, it should take her away from her small-minded family. She engineers her own marriage to a rich viscount in a bid for freedom, but finds herself bound further by his domineering nature. She's eventually shipped off to her in-laws, held as a vessel for her husband to impregnate. Her only escape is visits to a mysterious, ageless widow who runs an apothecary. 'I want to be free,' María says, as she is finally seduced into vampirism. 'By any means necessary.' Nearly 300 years later in the English countryside, Charlotte lives an idyllic life enjoying nature and literature and the company of her childhood friend Jocelyn, whom she is in love with. But when her brother catches the two young women kissing, he arranges for Charlotte to be sent to London to become a proper lady and find a husband. Though she is bound in corsets and trapped in manors to wait for men to fill her dance card, she eventually finds excitement in a glamorous widow who takes the impressionable Charlotte under her wing, seduces her and changes her in more ways than one. In 2019, Alice has chosen her own exile, leaving her small town in Scotland to attend Harvard University. Growing up, Alice was a shadow to her more feral sister, Catty, and now away at college, she wants to form her own independent identity. Alice seems to get her wish when she meets a beautiful, magical girl at a party. But after a dreamy one-night stand, Alice finds herself transformed in ways she hadn't imagined possible — and didn't agree to. Alice, confused and tortured by an insatiable hunger, goes in search of answers, and finds herself drawn into a centuries-old drama. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
