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thomasxvii 's review for:
Carmilla
by J. Sheridan Le Fanu
It felt more like a study on the nature of vampires than an actual entertaining story.
Being a classic, of which I have read very few, the writing style was a bit jarring. By the time I had mostly adjusted to it, the book was almost over. It's very wordy in a way that felt weird and unnatural to me but I'm aware that's what most classics are like. I wonder to what extent people actually spoke like that when the book was written or whether it was just in the literature.
Onto the story itself. It's set in the Austrian forest and we get some nice imagery of the surrounding landscape. It's told by the woman who experienced the events and is now recounting them after the fact. I think this is usually a good way of doing first person as it makes more physical sense than just reading someone's internal monologue, but it's not very effective when she almost spoils her own story. OK, maybe not spoils it, but I was repeatedly being told that something bad was going to happen. I think this way of storytelling is common in gothic horror.
There were a few moments that gave me the chills despite being mostly unsurprising and they were very effective. I like how gothic horror is less about jumpscares and more about conveying a haunting, disconcerting kind of feeling. However, most of the book lacked surprise factor or emotional weight and it ended up being anticlimactic.
Of course, I already knew that the book was about vampires. Maybe the first readers wouldn't have or maybe even entertained the possibility that vampires might actually exist. I think such an audience would have found more value in the story.
There's also the sapphic aspect and it is genuinely interesting to see how that's presented; if you want to be academic about it. But in terms of storytelling, the book doesn't offer much.
Being a classic, of which I have read very few, the writing style was a bit jarring. By the time I had mostly adjusted to it, the book was almost over. It's very wordy in a way that felt weird and unnatural to me but I'm aware that's what most classics are like. I wonder to what extent people actually spoke like that when the book was written or whether it was just in the literature.
Onto the story itself. It's set in the Austrian forest and we get some nice imagery of the surrounding landscape. It's told by the woman who experienced the events and is now recounting them after the fact. I think this is usually a good way of doing first person as it makes more physical sense than just reading someone's internal monologue, but it's not very effective when she almost spoils her own story. OK, maybe not spoils it, but I was repeatedly being told that something bad was going to happen. I think this way of storytelling is common in gothic horror.
There were a few moments that gave me the chills despite being mostly unsurprising and they were very effective. I like how gothic horror is less about jumpscares and more about conveying a haunting, disconcerting kind of feeling. However, most of the book lacked surprise factor or emotional weight and it ended up being anticlimactic.
Of course, I already knew that the book was about vampires. Maybe the first readers wouldn't have or maybe even entertained the possibility that vampires might actually exist. I think such an audience would have found more value in the story.
There's also the sapphic aspect and it is genuinely interesting to see how that's presented; if you want to be academic about it. But in terms of storytelling, the book doesn't offer much.