I went back to reading fiction last year. Not to the extent I did when I was in my 20s and 30s, and certainly not to the extent of my wife, who reads over a hundred books every year. But after at least a decade of limiting my reading to non-fiction - especially magical and religious books, many of which ended up reviewed here - I realized I needed the power of good stories in my life again.
I read 18 novels in 2023. As I write this I've read 23 in 2024, and I'll read at least another one or two over the holidays. So, progress.
I like magical stories: the classics like Dracula and Frankenstein, contemporary Urban Fantasy, and my new favorite genre Dark Academia. As with movies, I don't want horror to scare me, I want it to fascinate me. I want it to show me a world of magic that no one can really do, because that inspires me to do the magic that anyone can do... if they will.
Last year's Top 5 Novels post had a nice picture of the five books. I can't do that this year - everything I read (except a re-read of Frankenstein from a paperback I've had for at least 30 years) was on Kindle. I don't like reading from Kindle, but I do like being able to get books instantly, and usually cheaper. Mainly I don't have to find shelf space for them... or wall space to put a new book case.
And with that, here are the top five novels I read this year, plus a couple others I want to talk about.
Poppy wakes up to find that she's now a vampire. This presents complications, but when you're a sex worker in early Victorian England, you know life's not going to be easy. You figure out what you have to do and you do it. And so she does.
A Long Time Dead is a bit anachronistic - some of the language and concepts are more suited to our time than to 1837. But it's a good story, and it's lighthearted without being silly, which made for a very enjoyable read.
Ultimately, this is a queer vampire story about family - not the family you're born into, but the family you make. And nurture. And love. And defend.
Saturnalia by Stephanie Feldman. 2022, 256 pages.
In a near future that's well down the road to dystopia - a future that's entirely possible, and maybe even likely - Philadelphia is controlled by elite societies that use magic to keep themselves safe and in power. Nina walked away from the influential Saturn Club three years ago and she's struggling, financially and otherwise. As the annual Saturnalia carnival nears, one of the members asks her for a favor and won't take no for an answer.
This is a fast-paced story over a very short time period - it reminded me of the TV show 24. It's a very good blend of action, magic, relationships, political intrigue... and a look at our own future, metaphorically if not literally.
Séances were very popular in Victorian Britain. Groups like the fictional London Séance Society existed, and some still do. But such societies - whether historical or fictional - did not exist outside the culture of the mainstream society. Which meant they were subject to prejudice, personality conflicts, corruption, and occasionally, murder.
The book opens with Lenna Wickes in France to study mediumship with the renowned spiritualist Vaudeline D'Allaire... and also to investigate her sister's mysterious death. Vaudeline is suddenly called back to London and Lenna goes with her. What follows is part detective story, part occult mystery, and part LGBTQ romance.
The title of this book comes from I Await The Devil's Coming, a "portrayal" (i.e. - diary) by Mary MacLane, a 19 year old woman in Montana in 1901. I wrote about Mary MacLane back in February. She complained about unrelatable characters in "girl-books" and then said "I wish some one would write a book about a plain, bad heroine so that I might feel in real sympathy with her."
119 years later, Emily M. Danforth took her up on it.
In 1902, two students at the Brookhants School for Girls are inspired by Mary MacLane and in love with each other. Things turn tragic and the school closes. In the present, a young writer publishes a book about the events, which is turned into a major Hollywood movie. Strange things happen - is the school haunted? Or cursed? Are the events of 1902 repeating themselves?
One review describes Plain Bad Heroines as "a sapphic-gothic-comedy." It's definitely sapphic and definitely gothic. I wouldn't call it a comedy, but there is enough humor in it to lighten up some very serious subjects.
This is the longest book on this list, by a lot. But it never felt slow. If anything, the ending felt a bit rushed - it could have used another 20 or 30 pages. But it's a great story and it was a very enjoyable read.
An Education In Malice by S.T. Gibson. 2024, 368 pages.
An Education In Malice combines my all-time favorite genre (vampires) with my current favorite (Dark Academia). It's a very loose adaptation of J. Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 novella Carmilla, which is one of the foundational works of modern vampire fiction. It takes three of the central characters (Carmilla, Laura, and Mademoiselle De Lafontaine) and puts them in a women's college in New England in 1968. De Lafontaine is an enigmatic professor of literature and poetry, while Carmilla and Laura are her most talented - and most competitive - students.
The story is amazing. You can call it a romance - I prefer to see it as a story of characters who figure out what they want and then go get / do / become it, no matter what anyone else thinks. The relationship between Laura and Carmilla is what previous tellings of this story could have been, if General Spielsdorf had minded his own business. Its look into vampire society is very good, and it has a connection to Gibson's 2022 novel A Dowry of Blood, which was #3 on my last year's list.
It's not perfect. De Lafontaine is alternatively a ruthless predator and a caring mentor. Laura is incredibly self-assured for a freshman who's never experienced much beyond her home in Mississippi. And this is definitely not Ingrid Pitt's Carmilla (to be fair, Pitt was 32 when she played Carmilla in The Vampire Lovers (1970) - the character is 21 in An Education In Malice and younger than that (in appearance, anyway) in Le Fanu's novella).
But those are nitpicky complaints. If you want to know what I really think, know that An Education In Malice is the first novel I've re-read (other than classics like Dracula and Frankenstein) in more years than I can remember. I read it shortly after it came out in February, and then I re-read it a couple weeks ago. I was looking for something that combined Dark Academia with the supernatural, couldn't find anything new that grabbed me, and decided to give this another read. I enjoyed as much the second time as I did the first.
And then I ordered a physical copy so I'll always have it. That ended any debate about which of these five very good books should be #1 for the year.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt. 1992, 576 pages.
This is the "ur-novel" of Dark Academia, featuring a protagonist who's a brilliant student from a poor family who struggles to fit in with the rich kids and their old money at an exclusive private school. The book was a best seller when it came out, received largely (though not entirely) glowing reviews, and inspired a new genre of literature.
After I read several Dark Academia novels - including at least two that mentioned The Secret History by name in the story - I knew I had to read it.
I was underwhelmed.
One recent reviewer called it "a tale of class, privilege, and cluelessness." It's long, but more because the author spends a lot of time on details of questionable relevance than because the story requires so many pages.
Is the magic and Paganism in The Secret History real, or is it a psychological delusion? I'm pretty sure it's delusions. The plot of jealousy, murder, and guilt is deep, but it strains credulity in the ordinary world.
And at the end of all 576 pages, it wasn't an enjoyable read. I get why The Secret History is important, and I'm not sorry I spent the time to read it. But I definitely won't be reading it again.
Daughters of Shadow and Blood series by J. Matthew Saunders. Yasamin: 2015, 398 pages. Elena: 2016, 378 pages. Elizabeth: 2017, 382 pages.
Bram Stoker said next to nothing about the three "weird sisters" who shared Dracula's castle with him. Dracula is long out of copyright and the Brides of Dracula are waiting for someone to tell their stories. This three-book series is such an attempt.
Unfortunately, Daughters of Shadow and Blood is more Dan Brown than Anne Rice. The main character is an American history professor who finds himself caught up in a violent search for Dracula's medallion, which turns out to be a MacGuffin. The three brides are secondary characters who tell their stories in flashback, but the books aren't really about them.
However...
The books are set in eastern and central Europe in 1999, in the aftermath of the wars in Bosnia and other Balkan countries in the 1990s. They do a very good job of providing context for those wars, going back to the Ottoman Empire and Vlad the Impaler (1431 - 1476) - the historical Dracula. I read the books in October in the lead-up to the U.S. elections and saw a lot of correspondences to our current situation here.
The Daughters of Shadow and Blood books are mediocre vampire fiction but good historical fiction.