Review: The Art of War

Title: The Art of War: The Essential Translation of the Classic Book of Life

Author: Sun Tzu (original text) and John Minford (translator/commentator)

Genre: Classic/History

Trigger Warnings: Discussion of war, death, and violence

Back Cover:

For more than two thousand years, The Art of War has stood as a cornerstone of Chinese culture, a lucid text that reveals as much about psychology, politics, and economics as it does about battlefield strategy. The influence of Sun-tzu’s text has grown tremendously in the West in recent years, with military leaders, politicians, and corporate executives alike finding valuable insight in these ancient words.

Review:

I hadn’t really intended to review this book, because I didn’t really have a lot to say about it. Then I encountered this Tumblr post that was so on the nose that I had to write a review just so I could show how somebody else’s words said my thoughts better:

This version of the book has a lot of context and commentary on it, which is good because just the text of Sun Tzu’s book is maybe ten pages. I also think it’s good to read a version with context and commentary, because you get an understanding of what was going on in the world when Sun Tzu (or his disciples or someone writing under that pseudonym) was writing, the historical stories and legends discussed, and its influence on Chinese thought. It also included ancient Chinese commentary as well as the translator’s commentary, and occasionally the translator’s commentary on the ancient Chinese commentary to explain concepts or historical or mythological figures discussed.

All of this is good information to support Sun Tzu’s actual text, which really does read like the Tumblr post. It feels like sitting down and studying the book would lead to good strategic warfare, but at the same time most of the advice presented seems very common-sense – the “if you think you might lose, avoid doing that” kind. But if nothing else, it was an interesting read, especially with all the commentary included.

Review: 1984

Title: Nineteen Eighty-Four

Author: George Orwell

Genre: Classic/Dystopian

Trigger Warnings: Torture (graphic), abuse (graphic), brainwashing (graphic), violence, antisemitism, sexual content, rape (mentions)

Back Cover:

In the year 1984, much of the world has fallen victim to perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, historical negationism, and propaganda. Great Britain, known as Airstrip One, has become a province of a totalitarian superstate named Oceania that is ruled by the Party who employ the Thought Police to persecute individuality and independent thinking. Big Brother, the dictatorial leader of Oceania, enjoys an intense cult of personality, manufactured by the party’s excessive brainwashing techniques. The protagonist, Winston Smith, is a diligent and skillful rank-and-file worker and Outer Party member who secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion. He enters into a forbidden relationship with a colleague, Julia, and starts to remember what life was like before the Party came to power.

Review:

I first read Nineteen Eighty-Four in high school. Being homeschooled, there wasn’t any discussion or context for it, my mother just handed me a list of classic books she read in high school English and told me to have at it. I remember very few of the books I read off that list, but I do remember I hated Nineteen Eighty-Four. Absolutely loathed it. I read a lot of dystopian back then, but it was young adult dystopian (riding on the success of The Hunger Games and mostly following the same formula) where there were rebellions and the heroic protagonists overthrew the evil government by the end of the trilogy. A dystopian book where the protagonist wasn’t “good” and the evil government won was inconceivable to me. Plus there was sex in this, and I was very much not comfortable with that.

I picked it up again because I read Brave New World, another classic dystopian written about a decade before this book, and I wanted to compare the two. I didn’t end up doing a lot of comparing, though, because I was reexperiencing the story. With the benefits of having enough adult awareness to see the many ways the world is screwed up (and the maturity to not immediately throw the book in the “not suitable for Good Christian Readers” pile the instant sex is mentioned), I was able to read it in a whole new light.

From endless wars where the enemy changes but the demand for patriotism doesn’t to constant government surveillance to strong stratification between upper and lower classes, much of this book maps directly onto my modern experience. The Party has a distinctly communist feel, but I don’t know if that’s because George Orwell actually feared the oppression would come from communism or because he just took a lot of imagery and ideas from the Soviet Union for the Party. (Wikipedia suggests he opposed totalitarianism in all forms, not specifically communism.) I found the telescreens used to both broadcast and spy highly ironic, because I’m pretty sure TVs don’t have the technology to broadcast our actions or words back to anyone but our phones sure do and we voluntarily take them everywhere.

You can read this as an interesting dystopian with elements of current reality, or you can let it make you really depressed. I went back and forth on how I was experiencing it. But I finally understand why this is a book people make high schoolers read.

Since this is a reread, this review has more been about my changing understanding of the book than the book itself. It is well written, with a solid world dominated by a totalitarian government, a fairly unlikeable narrator that you manage to root for anyway and a fairly unlikeable love interest who is nevertheless relatable, and a really horrifying amount of brainwashing torture that spans roughly the last third of the book. It’s quite good, and shockingly prescient considering it was published 72 years ago. I don’t think it’s one that I’ll reread repeatedly, but reading it again with adult eyes was definitely worthwhile.

Review: Brave New World

Title: Brave New World

Author: Aldous Huxley

Genre: Classic/Dystopian

Trigger Warnings: Suicide, racism, sexual content, drug use, drug abuse, death of parent, self-harm, physical abuse (mentions), fatphobia/body shaming

Back Cover:

Brave New World is a dystopian novel written in 1931 by English author Aldous Huxley, and published in 1932. Largely set in a futuristic World State of genetically modified citizens and an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific developments in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation, and classical conditioning that are combined to make a utopian society that goes challenged only by a single outsider.

Review:

I was not entirely sure what to think about this book after finishing it. Despite Aldous Huxley only being 37 when he wrote it, it has a very strong “old man fears societal change and scientific advancement” vibe. I had hoped there was a #disrupttexts discussion about it so I could get some other perspectives, but I can’t find one. So I’m left to interpret it on my own. This review may get long.

In the World State, babies are no longer born out of human wombs. Instead, they are grown in test tubes, selected and genetically manipulated from even before the moment a sperm hits an egg in a fertilization tank, and conditioned until age twelve, all in the interest of producing a strictly class-stratified society where each person is genetically manipulated and mentally conditioned to not only accept but love their lot in life. Alphas are the prettiest, tallest, smartest, and one-of-a-kind, and lowly Gammas and Epsilons are conditioned to hate knowledge and beauty and are only one of up to ninety-six genetically identicial people. Excessive consumption is practically law, leisure is mainly sports that require lots of expensive equipment, free sex without commitment is the relationship model, and if you start having negative thoughts, the drug soma will make you feel good again.

In the beginning, the book bounces through a bunch of different characters in the effort of illustrating how the world works. It eventually settles on Bernard Marx as something of a main character. Bernard is very much a misfit in his world – he is much shorter than people of his class (Alpha, the highest) are supposed to be, and he likes solitude and monogamy and doesn’t like sports or soma, all of which are considered practically pathological in World State society. But he does desperately want to be accepted and be considered normal.

So when John shows up about halfway through the book, it almost immediately pivots to him as the main character. John is the natural-born son of a woman from the World State who got lost and trapped on a “Savage Reservation.” John was born and grew up there, a world where people age, babies come from wombs, honor and suffering are important parts of life, and consumption isn’t an option. He is the outsider that challenges the societal norms of the World State because he finds a challenge-free life of uninspired contentment and free sex without romance completely intolerable.

John is portrayed as the “noble savage” (despite being 100% white), the only person in the whole of society who prefers a life with challenge to a life without, who understands that heterosexual monogamous marriage is the only correct sexual arragement, who knows and follows the traditions of past great men, who finds the honor in devotion to religion and its rituals, and who accepts unhappiness as part of the human condition. Bernard likes solitude and doesn’t like drugs, but it’s implies that he doesn’t go far enough. Tradition is better than progress, the book seems to say. Natural things are better than whatever science can come up with, loose women will destory male-female interaction altogether, old works are better than new, letting scientific discoveries and societal advancement keep us from being unhappy is actually a very bad thing. Practically the only thing I agree with this book about is that strictly stratified societies consigning people to a particular caste even before their birth and giving no opportunity for individual choice are a bad thing.

This is a very complex book, and I know there’s more to be said about it than what I’m saying here. There’s definitely some notes to be made about race, gender, queerness, and religion that I just don’t have room for since this review is already so long. I would love to see the people at #disrupttexts put out something on Brave New World with an English teacher’s analysis on what this book is trying to say. Despite my mostly-negative-but-still-technically-mixed feelings on the morals here, it actually is an interesting dystopian world.

Review: The Blue Castle

Title: The Blue Castle

Author: L.M. Montgomery

Genre: Classic/Romance

Trigger Warnings: Emotional abuse, death, death of children (mentions), serious/fatal illness

Back Cover:

An unforgettable story of courage and romance. Will Valancy Stirling ever escape her strict family and find true love?

Valancy Stirling is 29, unmarried, and has never been in love. Living with her overbearing mother and meddlesome aunt, she finds her only consolation in the “forbidden” books of John Foster and her daydreams of the Blue Castle–a place where all her dreams come true and she can be who she truly wants to be. After getting shocking news from the doctor, she rebels against her family and discovers a surprising new world, full of love and adventures far beyond her most secret dreams.

Review:

It’s a tragedy that the Anne of Green Gables series is L.M. Montgomery’s most popular work, because The Blue Castle is objectively better.

Okay, maybe not objectively, but I never could get into the Anne books and I adored this one.

Valancy Stirling has spent her life stifled by her controlling mother, her overbearing extended family, and being homely and unmarriageable, which make her a social pariah. When the doctor tells her she has only a year, and quite likely less, to live, she realizes she’s going to die without having ever really lived. And she realizes that she won’t be around to face the consequences, so she might as well do what she wants.

And so she starts doing what she wants and not doing what she doesn’t want, starting with spending time alone when she isn’t sleeping (yes, her mother/family were that controlling). The scene where she starts displaying her newfound independence over lunch with her extended family is an absolute delight. Valancy has never been allowed to do anything that hasn’t gone through a rigorous approval process from the entire extended family, so she has plenty of wonderful ways to rebel, from wearing her hair how she wants to reading during the day to taking care of an old friend with a terminal illness.

And it is fantastic. Every single moment I’ve ever had of wanting to tell my relatives to mind their own business and let me live my own life got to live vicariously through Valancy. Even though the story is haunted by her impending death, it is a sweet and optimistic story of Valancy finding happiness and falling in love for the first time in her life. And, as one would expect from this kind of story, it has a happy ending.

Is it trite and fairly predictable? Yes. I guessed most of the twists while reading, but I’m sure I could have guessed the one that I didn’t anticipate if I’d thought about it. Someone who didn’t like it could call it “predictable” and they’d be right. But it was light, and fun, and cute, and overall just so entertaining. It’s not at all a serious read, but it is delightful just the same.

Review: Dracula (DNF)

Title: Dracula

Author: Bram Stoker

Genre: Horror/Classic

Trigger Warnings: Blood, death, suicide, medical procedures, mental asylums

Read To: 38%

Back Cover:

The aristocratic vampire that haunts the Transylvanian countryside has captivated readers’ imaginations since it was first published in 1897.

Review:

It took me nearly half an hour to find a back cover blurb to put in this review that said anything about the story itself, as opposed to just listing the commentary this particular volume has or quoting people on how much of a classic the book is. And I suppose that’s for good reason – everybody knows the story of Dracula. It’s not even a spoiler at this point to reveal the twists, because it’s so ingrained in pop culture that literally everyone knows Count Dracula is a vampire.

But knowing that fact (which you really can’t escape without living under a rock) really ruins the experience of reading this book.

To be fair, Bram Stoker is very repetitive. Literally my last two hours listening to the book were a repeating series of, “Oh no, Lucy is so sick and she seems to have lost so much blood but we don’t know why!” Mysterious things in the night. “Oh no, Lucy looks worse!” “I’m Lucy and I’m afriad to sleep because terrible things happen at night.” Something happens one night to prevent Dracula from getting Lucy alone. “Oh good, Lucy seems so much better!” Repeat. It gets boring pretty quickly.

Already knowing the twist – that Dracula has gone to England and he’s a vampire sucking Lucy’s blood – made the repetition seem more annoying than it probably would have if I didn’t know. It seemed to be trying to build up suspense and horror. But not only is Dracula the most well-known vampire figure out there, vampire lore is so prevalent in pop culture that any modern person who didn’t know the twist would immediately guess “vampire” as soon as the two pin-pricks on Lucy’s neck were mentioned.

And that destroys the suspense and really the point of the novel. It’s gothic horror, it’s supposed to be building up to this horrifying reveal that the unspeakable things happening to Lucy are due to an undead monster drinking her lifeblood. It’s supposed to intrigue and thrill and terrify with the horror of the demonic undead feasting upon the living. But in modern times, we know vampires. We know Dracula is a vampire, and we also have lots more vampire stories – demonic and horrible vampires, yes, but also heroic vampires, sexy vampires, sparkly vampires, relatable vampires, tragic vampires, and vampires who we love and root for. What terrified Bram Stoker’s readers in 1897 isn’t nearly as terrifying to us. Yes, it’s still unnerving to find a blood-drinking undead creature in the shadows, but in the modern imagination, that creature is more likely to become a friend or lover than a nightmare.

Review: Dune (DNF)

Title: Dune

Series: Dune #1

Author: Frank Herbert

Genre: Science Fiction

Trigger Warnings: Torture, torture of children, attempted murder of children, mentions of death, fatphobia (note: I’m pretty sure there are other trigger warnings in this book, these are just what I personally encountered in what I read)

Read To: 22% (4.5 hours of audiobook)

Back Cover:

Set in the far future amidst a sprawling feudal interstellar empire where planetary dynasties are controlled by noble houses that owe an allegiance to the imperial House Corrino, Dune tells the story of young Paul Atreides (the heir apparent to Duke Leto Atreides and heir of House Atreides) as he and his family accept control of the desert planet Arrakis, the only source of the ‘spice’ melange, the most important and valuable substance in the cosmos. The story explores the complex, multi-layered interactions of politics, religion, ecology, technology, and human emotion as the forces of the empire confront each other for control of Arrakis.

Published in 1965, it won the Hugo Award in 1966 and the inaugural Nebula Award for Best Novel. Dune is frequently cited as the world’s best-selling sf novel.

Review:

My husband has been begging me to read this book for a long, long time. He kept hyping it up, and he wasn’t the only one – every single description I read of it was light on the plot and heavy on the “Dune is amazing,” “the best scifi novel ever written,” “Frank Herbert’s death was a loss to the world because he wrote Dune” stuff. So I went into it with high expectations and no real idea what the story was actually about.

At 7% into the story, I texted my husband and asked if it got better once they actually moved to the planet Arrakis, because so far:

• Paul took a torture test to prove he was human (there was doubt for some reason I guess?)
• there was an exposition conversation about a prophesied male savior who could access both male and female magic (I think it’s magic?) as opposed to the women who were limited to only female magic
• an antagonist got introduced briefly
• Paul did duke’s son things like having lessons and talking to members of the guard

My husband assured me that it did get better, so I kept going. And it did not. I felt more connection to the character being forced to betray the Atreides family than I did to Paul, his mother, or Duke Leto combined, because he at least had desires and motivations. And that connection wasn’t great – I don’t even remember that character’s name.

It seemed like the story was trying to be about The Prophecy That May Or May Not Be About Paul, but it was actually about politics. The politics of being a proper duke’s son and heir, the politics of establishing yourself as in charge on a new planet, politically defeating your political enemies, mining strategies and diplomacy plans and managing troops … it was boring. So insufferably boring. None of the characters were people, none of them had wants or desires or motivations or even agency. They were cardboard cutouts that shuffled each other around doing politics until something happened to them and they went, “oh, that’s what we’re doing now” and did more politics about it.

This is science fiction, but the only way you know is by occasional mentions of futuristic technology and the fact that they’re on a planet that isn’t Earth, with its desert setting and natives whose eyes are solid blue with no whites. (The desert planet Arrakis could have been a fascinating setting if it was in a book where people actually did things.) It could just have easily been dropped in a high fantasy world of elves and dragons, or somewhere in the historical Middle Ages, or almost any other setting with only minor adjustments.

I legitimately have no idea how this book became the world’s best-selling science fiction novel. I get that some people enjoy slow stories of politics and resource management, but if I’m picking up a scifi novel that’s not what I want or expect. It’s too long, too slow, following too many characters with too many names I can’t remember, and yet somehow nothing happens. (And from the Wikipedia summary, it doesn’t look like that gets any better.) I’m used to old genre fiction not giving female characters agency, but no characters seemed to have agency here. This isn’t a science fiction book, or a book about Arrakis or characters or even Paul becoming a gratuitously over-powered scifi hero. It’s a book about characters pointlessly doing politics, and a boring one at that.

The Dune series:

1. Dune
2. Dune Messiah
3. Children of Dune
4. God Emperor of Dune
5. Heretics of Dune
6. Chapterhouse: Dune

Review: The Count of Monte Cristo

Title: The Count of Monte Cristo

Author: Alexandre Dumas

Genre: Classic

Trigger Warnings: Death, poison, guns, suicide, prison

Back Cover:

In 1815 Edmond Dantès, a young and successful merchant sailor who has just recently been granted the succession of his erstwhile captain Leclère, returns to Marseille to marry his Catalan fiancée Mercédès. Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantès is confined to the grim fortress of the Chateau d’If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and he becomes determined not only to escape, but also to unearth the treasure and use it to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration.

Review:

The Count of Monte Cristo is one of my favorite classic books ever. This is a reread – I first read the full version back in 2013, and an abridged version before that – and it’s still great as ever.

The story starts out incredibly simply. Edmond Dantès is the victim of a conspiracy by three men – Danglars, his rival for the captaincy of the ship Edmond sails on; Fernand, a man who loves Mercédès and hates that Mercédès loves Edmond over him; and Villefort, a man who has nothing against Edmond in particular but condemns him to protect his political interests. Edmond spends 14 years in prison without even knowing what crime he’s accused of, where he befriends a fellow prisoner who teaches him everything from other languages to chemistry and also tells him where to find an unimaginably large fortune.

Edmond escapes prison and finds the fortune, and that’s where things get incredibly and delightfully complicated. Edmond, now known as the Count of Monte Cristo, is out for revenge, but it’s the type of revenge that’s carefully orchestrated to slowly destroy everything these three men hold dear. All three are now married with children – Fernand has a son, and Danglars and Villefort both have a daughter. All of them are important characters. So are the owner of Edmond’s old ship and his son, as well as a handful of young noblemen. There are subplots of romance and marriage. There are subplots of marital issues and past affairs. There are the subplots of all the different things the Count knows somehow. And through it all you get to watch the Count of Monte Cristo pull the strings of a beautiful and poetic revenge that leaves one of the three men bankrupt, one of them mad, and one of them dead.

There’s a lot, and it does take some concentrating to keep track of all the different threads of everything going on – partly because the book is juggling so many characters with their own motivations and situations, and partly because it is written in a fairly dense nineteenth-century style (which I like, but not everybody does).

This book is great. The Count is always at least one step ahead of where you think he is and three steps ahead of what any of the characters think, and I absolutely love it. Plus reading about the Count’s absurd displays of weath is pretty fun, too. It’s a fantastic classic and I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Review: The Bluest Eye

Title: The Bluest Eye

Author: Toni Morrison

Genre: Classic

Trigger Warnings: Death, sexual assault, rape, pedophilia, feces

Back Cover:

Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl, prays every day for beauty. Mocked by other children for the dark skin, curly hair, and brown eyes that set her apart, she yearns for the blond hair and blue eyes that she believes will allow her to finally fit in. Yet as her dream grows more fervent, her life slowly starts to disintegrate in teh face of adversity and strife. A brilliant examination of our obsession with beautiy and conformity, Toni Morrison’s virtuosic first novel asks powerful questions about race, class, and gender with the subtlety and grace that have always charaacterized her writing.

Review:

I am … not sure what to say about this book.

The Bluest Eye was my book club’s October pick. I’ve heard great things about Toni Morrison but never actually picked up one of her books. It was a short read (206 pages in my paperback copy) and surprisingly quick for as dark as it was.

There is not really a plot in this story. This is the story of … well, it’s sort of the story of Pecola Breedlove, but mostly it’s a story of the effects of a white-centric beauty standard and the people around Pecola and how they eventually change the life of a twelve-year-old girl from full of unfortunate circumstances to an outright tragedy. The story seems rambling – many of the characters surrounding Pecola get detailed backstories, showing the tragedies in their lives and how that drove them to do what they did to Pecola.

It was strange, and it didn’t seem very cohesive at times, but it was good. The writing was simultaneously raw and lyrical, and showed some really heavy, awful things with a poetry that somehow made it better and worse. At the end, I was left with the feeling that there was some Important Point that the book was trying to make that I just couldn’t quite grasp.

I can’t even really define this book in terms of liking it or not. I don’t even know if I liked it or not. It’s a well-written book, it feels like an important book, and I think whether or not I liked it in terms of enjoyment is irrelevant.

Review: Tales from the Arabian Nights

Title: Tales from the Arabian Nights

Translator: Sir Richard Francis Burton

Genre: Classic/Folklore

Trigger Warnings: Death, blood/gore, misogyny, racism, colorism, antisemitism

Back Cover:

These are the tales that saved the life of Scherehazade, whose husband, the king, executed each of his wives after a single night of marriage. Beginning an enchanting story each evening, Scherehazade always withheld the ending: a thousand and one nights later, her life was spared forever. Full of mischief, valor, ribaldry and romance, “The Arabian Nights” has enthralled readers for centuries. This volume contains the most famous and representative stories from Sir Richard F. Burton’s multi volume translation, and, unlike many editions, is complete unexpurgated. These tales, including “Aladdin or the Wonderful Lamp,” “Sinbad the Sailor,” and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” have entered into the popular imagination.

Review:

When I picked this book up at my local Half Price Books, I thought it was the complete Arabian Nights. I was wrong – the complete version of Burton’s translation is 16 volumes. This version has only a sampling of the stories, but it’s still almost 1,000 pages long.

Some of these I’d heard before, some of them I hadn’t, and even the ones I had heard were missing a lot of details. For example, you’ve probably heard the story of the fisherman who fishes up a bottle and then tricks the djinn inside into going back in – but have you heard the second half of it, where the fisherman catches magic fish and saves an entire city from a magic spell? I hadn’t.

This volume kept the original translation text from the 1800s, and sometimes I had to figure out what words meant from the context. I didn’t mind that, but I’m sure there are more modern translations you can get if that would bother you.

All the stories were fascinating. Some I enjoyed more than others – “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp” was actually kind of a slog to get through, and the much less well-known “The Story of Two Sisters Who Were Jealous of Their Younger Sister” was probably my favorite – but they were all entertaining reads. Sometimes the plots meander a bit, and it tends to layer stories within stories, which can get confusing, but they’re interesting anyway.

You also get an interesting look at Arabic culture, especially the opulence of royalty/rich people and their views of certain groups of people. For example, there’s a lot of racism (black people are universally slaves and described as “ugly” and “repulsive”) and colorism (the most beautiful people are described as having pure white skin). Women are also either being extremely beautiful objects to be won or irredeemably evil – the only exceptions being a slave girl in “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” and a princess in “The Story of the Two Sisters Who Were Jealous of Their Younger Sister” (both of whose “happy endings” are being married off to male characters).

Some other random things I didn’t realize about the Arabian Nights:

• Scherehazade actually asked to be married to the sultan, she wasn’t randomly picked.
• Scherehazade’s sister was with her and the sultan every night.
• The sultan didn’t decide to permanently not kill Scherehazade – she had to request it after 1001 nights of storytelling and bearing him three kids.
• Aladdin was Chinese (and a total jerk).
• There’s an Arabian version of the “Genghis Khan and his hawk” story (a story I read in elementary school English) – although the person who wrote the version I read was born in 1841 so it’s more likely he based his version on the story in this book and not the other way around.

Overall, this is a great collection of stories – a little dense, maybe, but highly entertaining (and a great look at Arabic culture if you’re into that). I highly recommend it. As for the complete 16-book collection … maybe I’ll read it someday. But for now, this is plenty.

Review: Carmilla

Image from Fantastic Fiction

Title: Carmilla

Author: J. Sheridan Le Fanu

Genre: Horror/Classic

Trigger Warnings: Death, blood

Back Cover:

Laura, a young woman deprived of much social interaction on her father’s isolated estate, is disappointed when an expected visitor dies before arriving at her father’s chateau. So she is thrilled when a carriage accident leaves another young woman staying with them until her mother returns from her urgent journey. But there is something darker hiding inside the captivating and charismatic Carmilla.

A classic Victorian vampire novella, Carmilla influenced Bram Stoker’s later treatment of the vampire mythos in Dracula.

Review:

I saw a post on Tumblr recommending this, and it was free on Project Gutenberg and a short read. (Short enough to read while waiting for my fiance to stop snoozing his alarms and get out of bed, actually, which was about 40 minutes.) It’s a short novella, so this is going to be a short review.

This is an old book, and it’s written with a definitely older writing style – dense, exposition-heavy, and packed with vocabulary words that may make you turn to a dictionary. It did take some getting used to (it’s been a while since I’ve read an old book), but I do like that kind of style.

The characters are pretty bare-bones, but that’s kind of expected in a book so short. (And in my opinion, the elegant and lengthy writing made up for what lacked in characterization.) You get the impression that Laura (who narrates) is overall happy with her life but still lonely. Carmilla gets the most characterization – she was charismatic and vibrant, though prone to physical weakness, and intensely affectionate towards Laura, but there are also hints that an equally intense temper underneath her veneer.

I also found it interesting that the female vampire only preyed on female victims, and there were definitely some gay vibes in Carmilla’s affection for Laura. (Of course, that could be my modern brain reading things into 1800s ways of expressing feelings, but I like to think it was at least a little gay.)

Carmilla was a short book, but it was good. It had interesting vampire lore, a cool vampire character, and actually a pretty good atmosphere for as short as it was. Plus, it’s free on Project Gutenberg, so why not give it a shot?