This time, the assignment was to articulate a character’s emotions of humiliation, alienation, or regret (without relying on the body or describing physical sensations as a fallback) based on a quote from Kafka: “I was ashamed of myself when I realized life was a costume party and I’d attended with my real face.”
That’s right in my wheelhouse, so I came up with the following:
Courtiers and merchants, all the richly dressed guests of the nobility, swirled around him in a suffocating press of bodies.
He should have known better.
How many times has Vidala told him? Truth is a coin that you must use sparingly, and for the love of god, don’t waste it on a pretty face! He felt sick with dread and a self-consciousness he’d thought he had put behind him.
The crowd had become a hazy blur, reduced to smears of colour, but he still felt every eye that picked him out as an imposter and every hidden smile of mockery at his expense. He should have made up some fanciful tale, he should have distracted her with flattery, he should have just kept his mouth shut, but Lady Pashavar had such kind eyes. Eyes that had crinkled with distaste, poorly hidden, when he’d revealed too much.
Here was a lowly street urchin who had clawed his way up into their elevated circles, playing the part of the up-and-coming merchant. Suddenly all his charm, his fine clothes, his handsome face, and the good opinion of his patrons didn’t matter at all. The illusion faded and all that was left was the truth. A hungry young man with a borrowed name.
I gotta say, I love to read about charming con artists and savvy urchins that manage to claw their way up into the high society and nobility. Something about the idea of the trappings of the upper echelons with the hidden agendas, subtle politicking, and double speak combined with watching a character who’s nothing but want dancing on the knife’s edge is very appealing. Everyone loves a well written underdog.
Mask of Mirrors by MA Carrick has two of my absolute favourite characters like that, and I highly recommend the series if you’re interested in political intrigue and conspiracy focused fantasy. The trilogy is incredibly written, and I can’t speak highly enough about the complex characters and world-building that draw you in from the first chapter. The high page count is well worth it.
That’s all for me this today! Please like, comment, and share if you enjoy what you’ve read.
With the longest nights of the year prowling around and some time off for the holidays, it was the perfect time to read An Education in Malice by S.T. Gibson, published in early 2024 by Orbit.
Version 1.0.0
Placing us in the late sixties, Gibson makes great (if somewhat clumsy at times) use out of the freewheeling fashion, music, and ideas on women’s liberation and sexuality to set the stage for her sapphic romance. The result is a uniquely modern, yet retro style that suits the gothic genre’s frequent themes of interplay between past and present very well.
We follow modern southern sweetheart Laura Sheridan as she arrives at St Perpetua’s Women’s College in Massachusetts (the ubiquitous setting for dark academia and gothic tales) to pursue writing. Laura is introduced as a polite, subdued, socially inexperienced young woman looking forward to the simple structures of the parish priesthood newly made available to her. But there’s a dark, obsessive streak to Laura which is drawn out by our second point of view character, Carmilla Karnstein, as well as the formidable and entrancing poetry professor Evelyn De Lafontaine.
Who is, of course, a vampire.
Carmilla Karnstein is completing her own studies as the mercurial professor’s star pupil and trusted companion, unchallenged until Laura joins the scene and De Lafontaine begins to pit the two against each other, both in and outside the classroom. A vicious rivalry springs up between the two, fueled by the competition for De Lafontaine’s attention and certainly not anything more (there’s so much more).
As the weeks pass by, that rivalry becomes a tumultuous friendship before transmuting into an intense flirtation, at which point the supernatural elements of the plot rear their head.
De Lafontaine has not become a professor at St Perpetua’s for no reason – her own former lover and sire, Isis, rests in a self-imposed, perpetual sleep in the hidden tunnels beneath the university. Upon attempting to wake her with her own companion’s fresh blood, Isis lashes out and kills Carmilla before fleeing, leaving De Lafontaine to turn her into a vampire out of desperation as Laura watches on in horror.
As Carmilla grapples with her new reality, her relationship with Laura becomes more devoted and charged while De Lafontaine’s jealousy blooms as the two young women explore the freedoms of vampire society under her watchful eye (which devastatingly only includes one very debaucherous party at the townhouse of highly respected vampire socialite Magdalena, which so happens to be name ascribed to one of Dracula’s brides in Bram Stoker’s novel). Meanwhile, other students at St Perpetua’s are beginning to show up dead and drained of blood.
Things come to a climax when Laura and Carmilla discover that De Lafontaine has been meeting secretly with Isis, pleading to stop the violence and run away together, to which Isis agrees if only De Lafontaine hands over her former companion. The three enact a plan to confront Isis. For a brief moment, it seems De Lafontaine has betrayed Laura and Carmilla for her former lover, unable to let her go, before that is swiftly revealed to be a ruse and Isis is summarily decapitated via a silver garden sickle.
The novel ends with Laura and Carmilla invited to summer in Spain with the lovely Magdalena to be better introduced into vampire society, and De Lafontaine leaving to free her two pupils from her own crushing orbit. In Spain, Laura is offered the choice to either remain human or join vampire society as more than a companion. Laura deliberates on the choice and comes to a decision, not for Carmilla or De Lafontaine but for herself. What that decision is, remains a mystery.
An Education in Malice is a fairly easy read, with lush prose that makes what may seem like simple, cliché character dynamics into something more complex and compelling. Though that complexity isn’t explored as deeply as I would like, we can easily imagine what else may be lurking by Gibson’s artful use of suggestion and implication.
As a gothic tale, the book hits all the salient themes of obsession, power imbalance, transgression, and eroticism, but those themes are sanded down into something a little softer than what may be intended in spite of itself (keeping in mind my own preference for books that don’t pull their punches). Gibson has done her readers the courtesy of adding a content warning, and in spite of being somewhat de-fanged, I think the story can still keep a firm grip around gothic horror fans’ throats.
Above all, this book is very much a character study. The relationships between Laura, Carmilla, and De Lafontaine are front and center, while the plot about a deranged vampire ex running amok across campus killing students takes a distant backseat. I personally would have loved to see more attention paid to the intricacies of vampire society, the intrigue surrounding Isis’ murderous campaign, and the meatier plot elements; however, that isn’t really what this story is about. The academic setting itself becomes unimportant once it’s carried us to the point where the vampiric elements can take over. Though even in acknowledging that, I still think that the final confrontation between Isis and our main trio is rather abrupt and underwhelming, which ends up leaving the tension and stakes for the characters themselves ringing hollow.
Overall, I rate this book as 8/10 and recommend it gladly to anyone looking for an approachable modern gothic romance. I personally prefer Gibson’s previous gothic novel Dowry of Blood, which focuses on the untold stories of the brides of Dracula. I’m not completely taken with the dark academia trend, and I think Dowry of Blood shows off Gibson’s strengths as a writer (lush prose, magnetic characters, and complex relationships) without An Education of Malice’s weaknesses.
That being said, the quality of Gibson’s writing is only getting stronger with every book that comes out, so I’m looking forward to her next standalone novel Savage Blooms scheduled to be published in October 2025.
That’s all for me this week! Please like, comment, and share if you enjoy what you’ve read.
Blue Orchid 