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irisestacansado's review against another edition
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death and Blood
Moderate: Torture and Adult/minor relationship
Minor: Sexual content and Sexual harassment
mals_library's review against another edition
2.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gaslighting, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Torture, Blood, and Physical abuse
Moderate: Child death, Confinement, Medical content, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, and Body horror
Minor: Excrement, Sexual content, Vomit, and Pregnancy
catmech's review
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Oh boy this book was. A lot. I'm going to break it down by pacing, characters, character development, the themes I think the book was going for, things I liked about Blood Countess, and a book that I think does what Blood Countess was trying to do better.
Also, the only reason I started reading this book was because I read the summary on the back, looked up Elizabeth Báthory, saw her age, read the first page of the book where Anna says she is 13, and went huh. Hope this book doesn't have a giant age difference in its lesbian romance. Turns out, it doesn't. Anna and Elizabeth have a three year age gap, with Anna being 16 and Elizabeth being 19. The thing is, it still makes me slightly uncomfortable. At that young of an age, any gap larger than two years is a bit much. With that aside, here we go!
The pacing of this book was very strange. Halfway through, not much had really happened ( at the beginning, Anna was offered the position of chambermaid, and halfway through she has achieved that position. So not much. ) So then I expected that the second half of the book would fly by, but it continued to move pretty slowly. Even after Ana killed Ferenc, the book still moved at a slog. I think what made the book feel so slow was that it really failed to give a sense of scale. It would describe multiple days at a time without really giving us a hint at how long of a period of time had passed, and then it would just describe other scenes without telling us when it was happening. At the end of the book, it said that only a year had passed. In my mind, it had been much longer, so that threw me off a bit.
I didn't find any of the characters to be particularly likable, which didn't help. I suspected that Anna would be an unreliable narrator, especially when she started explaining away Elizabeth's terrible actions. I thought that was an interesting way to tell the story, but after a while, her intentions became more clear and she stopped looking at Elizabeth with rose-colored glasses. I also thought that at times, Elizabeth and Ferenc seemed almost comical. The scene where they have dinner and torture four of the servants seemed so tonally off, and both characters seemed so one-dimensionally bent on sadism. None of the characters really seemed to have much depth.
In the same vein, I didn't find much character development in this book. Anna starts the novel competent at lying and medicine and ends the novel competent at lying and medicine. She does steel herself against all the gruesomeness happening around her as the book goes on, but overall, her character doesn't go through any dramatic changes. I think she could have been more interesting if after she killed Ferenc, she started to realize that as much as she liked healing and bringing people to the brink of death, she also realized that she enjoyed inflicting hurt on people who she believed to deserve it. That would have brought a bit of progress to her character. Elizabeth also doesn't change much. In the beginning, she is hinted at having sadistic tendencies. These seem to be culled by her husband's presence, which the book hints at in the beginning. Once Ferenc is gone, she is free to fulfill her sadistic pleasures at her own will, which results in her murdering many young women and girls. However, I think that if her husband hadn't been present at the beginning of the book, she would have been doing the same thing. Ferenc is also very one-dimensional and dies without changing a bit . Also, I absolutely cannot believe that Peter didn't change at all. The entire time. Anna is gone for an entire year and doesn't see him at all and he's just the same old Peter? Even at marriage age, and growing, and learning about the family business? He's just the same guy? Sigh. I wished a little that he would have been a little snippy at Anna or something, just a little bit. He's allowed to be a little upset at her for refusing his marriage proposal! It's only human, I feel! It's irrational for sure, but it just feels so unrealistic for him to be so nice of a person to not care at all that his close friend Anna didn't want to marry him. Especially for the standards at the time. But maybe that ties back into the feminist theme.
I'm not sure if the book was intended to be read as a description of an abusive relationship, but that's what I read it as. The way that Elizabeth was so sweet to Anna but could quickly turn on her read as abusive to me, especially when taking the power dynamic (employer and employee, countess and commoner) into account. I didn't particularly enjoy the amount of times Anna explained away Elizabeth's horribleness towards the servants as because of Ferenc's influence. I think Anna realizes later one that it wasn't because of Ferenc that Elizabeth loved to torture other women, but it still made me feel uncomfortable every time it came up. Even if Ferenc was pushing Elizabeth to torture other women, it still wouldn't make the things Elizabeth did okay. She still made people sew their hands together and whipped people to the point of bruising and welts. She could have taken at least a thousand other paths.
I also am not sure how I feel about the themes of feminism in this book. It emphasizes how much it sucks for women at the point in history the book takes place. Women were seen as weak and were expected to get married and have children at a young age. I'm fine with this theme, since it is realistic, but it didn't seem to go anywhere. It was definitely a bummer though.
Another thing I noticed and didn't enjoy was how the book indirectly (maybe directly) correlated beauty with morality and class. Elizabeth says several times, and Anna almost agrees, that because of Anna's "cold" looks, she deserves to be of a higher class. I'm not sure how aware the book was of these themes, but they just made me go. Hm. Alrighty then.
I really liked the tone of this book. There were a bunch of sentences that made me go oooooo at how gothic the word choices was. I especially enjoyed the descriptions of Elizabeth, since I was imagining her as the quintessential vampire queen. I also enjoyed the descriptions of the clothing, though I don't know how accurate it was. Did all women wear stays in the 1500s? I don't know.
I think that if you're looking for a book depicting realistic abusive relationships with vampire and gothic elements, you should read A Dowry of Blood instead. This book was explicitly written with the idea of portraying how Dracula and his brides could become a terrible relationship. S.T. Gibson does a terrific job with the characters, plot, descriptions, and themes. 5/5 highly recommend.
Also, the only reason I started reading this book was because I read the summary on the back, looked up Elizabeth Báthory, saw her age, read the first page of the book where Anna says she is 13, and went huh. Hope this book doesn't have a giant age difference in its lesbian romance. Turns out, it doesn't. Anna and Elizabeth have a three year age gap, with Anna being 16 and Elizabeth being 19. The thing is, it still makes me slightly uncomfortable. At that young of an age, any gap larger than two years is a bit much. With that aside, here we go!
The pacing of this book was very strange. Halfway through, not much had really happened ( at the beginning, Anna was offered the position of chambermaid, and halfway through she has achieved that position. So not much. ) So then I expected that the second half of the book would fly by, but it continued to move pretty slowly. Even after Ana killed Ferenc, the book still moved at a slog. I think what made the book feel so slow was that it really failed to give a sense of scale. It would describe multiple days at a time without really giving us a hint at how long of a period of time had passed, and then it would just describe other scenes without telling us when it was happening. At the end of the book, it said that only a year had passed. In my mind, it had been much longer, so that threw me off a bit.
I didn't find any of the characters to be particularly likable, which didn't help. I suspected that Anna would be an unreliable narrator, especially when she started explaining away Elizabeth's terrible actions. I thought that was an interesting way to tell the story, but after a while, her intentions became more clear and she stopped looking at Elizabeth with rose-colored glasses. I also thought that at times, Elizabeth and Ferenc seemed almost comical. The scene where they have dinner and torture four of the servants seemed so tonally off, and both characters seemed so one-dimensionally bent on sadism. None of the characters really seemed to have much depth.
In the same vein, I didn't find much character development in this book. Anna starts the novel competent at lying and medicine and ends the novel competent at lying and medicine. She does steel herself against all the gruesomeness happening around her as the book goes on, but overall, her character doesn't go through any dramatic changes. I think she could have been more interesting if after she killed Ferenc, she started to realize that as much as she liked healing and bringing people to the brink of death, she also realized that she enjoyed inflicting hurt on people who she believed to deserve it. That would have brought a bit of progress to her character. Elizabeth also doesn't change much. In the beginning, she is hinted at having sadistic tendencies. These seem to be culled by her husband's presence, which the book hints at in the beginning. Once Ferenc is gone, she is free to fulfill her sadistic pleasures at her own will, which results in her murdering many young women and girls. However, I think that if her husband hadn't been present at the beginning of the book, she would have been doing the same thing. Ferenc is also very one-dimensional and dies without changing a bit . Also, I absolutely cannot believe that Peter didn't change at all. The entire time. Anna is gone for an entire year and doesn't see him at all and he's just the same old Peter? Even at marriage age, and growing, and learning about the family business? He's just the same guy? Sigh. I wished a little that he would have been a little snippy at Anna or something, just a little bit. He's allowed to be a little upset at her for refusing his marriage proposal! It's only human, I feel! It's irrational for sure, but it just feels so unrealistic for him to be so nice of a person to not care at all that his close friend Anna didn't want to marry him. Especially for the standards at the time. But maybe that ties back into the feminist theme.
I'm not sure if the book was intended to be read as a description of an abusive relationship, but that's what I read it as. The way that Elizabeth was so sweet to Anna but could quickly turn on her read as abusive to me, especially when taking the power dynamic (employer and employee, countess and commoner) into account. I didn't particularly enjoy the amount of times Anna explained away Elizabeth's horribleness towards the servants as because of Ferenc's influence. I think Anna realizes later one that it wasn't because of Ferenc that Elizabeth loved to torture other women, but it still made me feel uncomfortable every time it came up. Even if Ferenc was pushing Elizabeth to torture other women, it still wouldn't make the things Elizabeth did okay. She still made people sew their hands together and whipped people to the point of bruising and welts. She could have taken at least a thousand other paths.
I also am not sure how I feel about the themes of feminism in this book. It emphasizes how much it sucks for women at the point in history the book takes place. Women were seen as weak and were expected to get married and have children at a young age. I'm fine with this theme, since it is realistic, but it didn't seem to go anywhere. It was definitely a bummer though.
Another thing I noticed and didn't enjoy was how the book indirectly (maybe directly) correlated beauty with morality and class. Elizabeth says several times, and Anna almost agrees, that because of Anna's "cold" looks, she deserves to be of a higher class. I'm not sure how aware the book was of these themes, but they just made me go. Hm. Alrighty then.
I really liked the tone of this book. There were a bunch of sentences that made me go oooooo at how gothic the word choices was. I especially enjoyed the descriptions of Elizabeth, since I was imagining her as the quintessential vampire queen. I also enjoyed the descriptions of the clothing, though I don't know how accurate it was. Did all women wear stays in the 1500s? I don't know.
I think that if you're looking for a book depicting realistic abusive relationships with vampire and gothic elements, you should read A Dowry of Blood instead. This book was explicitly written with the idea of portraying how Dracula and his brides could become a terrible relationship. S.T. Gibson does a terrific job with the characters, plot, descriptions, and themes. 5/5 highly recommend.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence
Moderate: Sexual content
Minor: Child death and Sexual assault
mermaidsherbet's review against another edition
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Toxic friendship, Torture, Physical abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Gore, Gaslighting, Domestic abuse, Confinement, Classism, Bullying, and Blood
Moderate: Medical content
Minor: Sexual content
melaniereadsbooks's review
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
This book was incredibly bloody, as can be expected from a Lady Dracula retelling. I have to say I honestly hated both main characters, and that made it hard for me to enjoy this book. Obviously you are supposed to dislike Elizabeth, but I didn't find much to like about Anna either. I did enjoy the plot for a while, but ended up not enjoying the ending very much, as I thought things were resolved too easily.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Mental illness, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Sexism, and Torture
Moderate: Sexual content and Sexual harassment
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