Victoria Schwab’s Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is the kind of book you will see on racks promising it will be an absorbing read (and it sort of is) and that is also literary (I’m less convinced) and also important or thematically rich (not really). But if you want a bit of a romp through lesbian vampires who are also complex because they Hunger (and at what point does hunger erase the vestiges of humanity?) and because they extract and exact Power – then sure, go for it.
I guess the parts most interesting are the way the different women-turned-vampires experience power and control. Sabine, the oldest and most badass of the vampires abuses her lover-turned-vampire-companion, Lottie. Lottie then exercises the limited control she has as an abuse victim – reckoning with her powerlessness against Sabine and demonstrating the oft trod adage that ‘leaving is rarely an event,’ which is to say, leaving an abusive relationship takes (according to the AI overview), on average, seven attempts. This part of the book – the reasons people stay in abusive relationships that are real (money, security, even love), the cycle of remorse and honeymoon and building tension and trigger, the way in which the past can haunt (in this case literally) – was the most interesting to me.
That said, I found it – in the end – over-the-top and as satisfied with itself for being intense as if it could just be the book without being so sure of its darkness and thematic complexity. I guess a similar reaction to reading The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue – same themes there (tortured immortality and the disintegration of self). So while a million places will recommend this book to you, take it from me and skip it – it is not nearly as interesting as it wants you to think it is.
Literary Vice 