Reviews with content warning for Sexism - A Dowry of Blood

Reviews tagging 'Sexism'

A Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson

27 reviews

caughtbetweenpages's review against another edition

emotional reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I absolutely loved this story. It was sold to me as “polyamorous Dracula’s wives join together to overthrow him”, and honestly? I wish I hadn’t heard that. Not because I felt it spoiled things, but because I think it cheapens the impact of the story.

Constanza’s (I regret calling her by that name, because it was given to her by Dracula/her abuser) (who is never directly named and thus afforded power by way of adding to his mystery) journey of self discovery after her identity is stripped from her is empowering, and her reclamation of her religious/ethical convictions, sexuality, and understanding of her intelligence and power was exactly the story I needed when I read this book. The relationships between her, Aleksei, and Magdalena, as well as the hints to the original story of Dracula, are just icing on the cake. I absolutely devoured it.

We follow the point of view of Dracula's first wife, a young woman named Constanza. I regret calling her by that name, because she has forgotten her real name and Constanza is the name that Dracula gave her when he sired her after a incredibly traumatic event happened to her and her family. And she comes back to life as a vampire and takes revenge on the people who hurt her, and feels tremendous amount of debt to and love for the person who (she feels, at the time) allowed her to save herself. But as the story goes on and as her sire's selfishness and cruelty and calculation become more and more evident, Constanza finds herself in an increasingly tense and difficult situation, one in which her agency is stripped from her and she is sort of forced into a role of learned helplessness. Never before have I read something that evoked in me the tension of being in an abusive relationship, the terror of being powerless in your own home against someone you still love and are connected to deeply.

I keep calling him Dracula. He's never actually named within the book. There are a couple hints--like there is a passage where they're talking about some annoying English people called the Harkers in Victorian England that the family has to deal with at some point--and there's a tremendous amount of, like, vampiric lore that I feel was popularized if not created by Bram Stoker within Dracula. But regardless, he is never directly addressed by name as such. As I said, the novella is told in Constanza's point of view but it is also told with the direct address: YOU did this, YOU are a monster, with the "you" being Dracula in this case. For much of the story, while he holds the majority of the power, this distancing, this almost mythologizing of this incredibly powerful figure, not even giving him a name because that would be to make him base, gives him a tremendous amount of power. But towards the end given what happens the "you" goes from just a telling of what's happening to an accusation. It's Constanza's taking back her agency, it's her reclaiming The Narrative that was taken from her the moment that she was killed. Her journey of self discovery after her identity is stripped from her is empowering, and her reclamation of her religious/ethical convictions, sexuality, and understanding of her intelligence and power was exactly the story I needed when I read this book.

But until we get to that point of empowerment I cannot describe to you the degree of tension that this book holds. The power and balance is is so skewed as to almost not need to be mentioned, C and D, they're on such stratospherically different levels of control within this situation. It's one of the most accurate depictions that I have ever read about of an abusive relationship and it was absolutely chilling. The introduction of Dracula's other partners with Magdalena (who Constanza has a, like, very deep depth of emotion towards) and then Aleksei (who she also loves but in a slightly different way) it's that love and it's the those connections that finally empower them. But it I feel like the way that they love is so inhuman and vampire in nature; I think St Gibson did a really really good job of demonstrating that there is a monstrosity to this type of thing as well. Though the novella was quite short and it predominantly focused on the reclamation of agency for Constanza (and then also of Magdalena and Aleksei to a lesser degree), I feel like it also did an excellent job of addressing, like, classical vampire preoccupations, like the things that are at the cornerstones of most vampire stories. So we address themes of religiosity; of what it means to actually be a monster; of the unchanging and unadaptable nature of vampirism and what that means in its positives, like the sort of eternity of beauty, and what that means in its negatives, in terms of stagnation and how that can disallow you to continue existing in a modern sense.

I truly think that vampires are probably the sexiest monster and that that is an intentional thing; there's a tremendous degree of like sensuality and sexuality within this novella and I really enjoyed how St Gibson played with the themes of, like, vampiric obsession versus love, of ownership versus agency, of queerness, of stagnating beauty, about how the sort of societally prescriptive ideas of what love and romance are meant to look like don't necessarily play well with the mythos of this thing, and does the monstrosity come from the fact that you are undying and you need to consume blood and Life Force to live forever or are you a monster because people consider your way of living and your way of being monstrous? I don't think it's coincidence that many queer people attach ourselves to stories about monstrosity and I think St Gibson plays that line and sort of makes it evident as to why those connections exist in the first place. I absolutely loved A Dowry of Blood I will be reading everything St Gibson has to write from here on out.

Content Warnings

thebookishwizard's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

morgane_killjoy's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

Entertaining book for bitlit lovers, not the most deep, interesting or well-written, but considering the rest of the genre, it's nice to read from the POV of a woman, and to frame the vampire (Dracula) as a self-absorbed manipulative a**hole.

Content Warnings