麻豆区
Customer Review
- Reviewed in Canada on July 17, 2025As someone who has yet to encounter the works of V.E. Schwab, I鈥檇 have told you there鈥檚 no better way to make an introduction than with a paranormal historical fantasy about lesbian vampires鈥 but the fact that she made something boring of what should have been exciting makes me honestly wonder what all the fuss is about.
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is a character-driven saga that examines themes of power and femininity through a lens of vampire mythology, but the problem is that鈥檚 all it is. All character and themes, and no plot. It鈥檚 an uneven, disjointed novel that suffers from pacing that drags and narrative POVs that are just long enough to incite curiosity but too short to create connections. To make matters worse, there鈥檚 no real depth to the characters and none of the development needed to move a story forward.
This. Just. Dragged.
There鈥檚 no sense of urgency, no momentum to the story. I prefer a book that has me turning pages, wondering what鈥檚 next, how something is going to be resolved, when someone is getting what鈥檚 coming to them, or when romance will bloom. Here, the only question I found myself asking was whether it was ever going to go somewhere. Admittedly, I started skimming after the 200 page mark, but I still feel confident saying this felt like 450 pages of exposition, 100 or so of rising action (most of which happens off the page), and then 10 pages of resolution.
I. Just. Didn鈥檛. Care.
Stylistically, I think I get what Schwab was going after here. I suspect she was after the feel of a Gothic melodrama, one where style matters more than substance, but my issue is that the story gets lost in the prose. I can appreciate that prose on a technical level, but I found it made for a very slow read when the story itself was already poorly paced. Maybe this is Schwab鈥檚 style, and maybe her fans know what they鈥檙e in for 鈥 I do seem to be in the minority 鈥 but as a newbie, this feels like a missed opportunity on so many fronts. I鈥檇 really hoped for more.
