Can I offer you a beautiful woman fleeing a castle in these trying times? From the cover of A Dangerous Observer alone, I knew this book was going to have everything I needed for a purely pleasurable escapist read. A Dangerous Observer is the latest Gothic Romance from one of my favorite authors, Amanda DeWees. (You may remember my reviews of her Gothic spin on Hamlet, Sea of Secrets, and her Daphne du Maurier Award–winning novel, With This Curse.) A Dangerous Observer came out just last month, so now is the perfect time to grab this fresh new read. Continue reading A Dangerous Observer Review–Escape into Gothic Suspense
Month: March 2020
Plagues and Pandemics in Horror
The spread of COVID-19 is taking over our lives right now. And while I know for some of you, death and disease are the last things you want to read about right now, for many others literature is a place where we can process and confront our anxieties. This has been true throughout history. The Gothic, in particular, has always had a fascination with contagious illness. You can’t build an entire genre around nostalgia for the Middle Ages without grappling with the Black Death—a devastating plague that swept through Europe in the 1300s, killing millions. As Gothic literature developed, many authors—particularly in the Victorian era—had their own lives touched by such infectious diseases as tuberculosis, cholera, scarlet fever, and typhoid. The pandemics of the past and the present force us to confront our mortality and fears around infection and contagion. Some authors explore this through the invention of fictional plagues, while others use myth and monsters as metaphor for transmitting disease. Below are a few major works from Gothic and horror literature’s rich tradition of plagues and pandemics: Continue reading Plagues and Pandemics in Horror
Byron and Polidori’s Vampire Tale
Tall, dark, handsome, … and bloodthirsty. We’re all familiar with the image of the seductively suave vampire. Usually a wealthy aristocrat, he mingles with respectable society while secretly preying upon innocent young maidens in the dead of night. But how did this depiction come to dominate the popular imagination? It all comes back to Byron. Continue reading Byron and Polidori’s Vampire Tale
Queen of the Conquered Review
How do you know if you’re the hero or the villain of your story? Sigourney Rose certainly sees herself as the hero in Kacen Callender’s adult fantasy debut Queen of the Conquered, but by the end of the novel we’re not quite so sure. Remember this book? It was one of the ones I highlighted back in October in my Slytherin Season post about books with snaky covers and resourceful, ambitious protagonists. Well, Queen of the Conquered certainly delivered on that front. Continue reading Queen of the Conquered Review
Classic Stage Company’s Dracula—A Feminist Adaptation
I love a good stage adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic vampire novel, Dracula. After all, Stoker worked in theater for much of his life, and always intended for his charismatic Count to take the stage. Last weekend, I had the pleasure of seeing a particularly unique performance of Dracula adapted by Kate Hamill for the Classic Stage Company in New York City. Hamill makes significant revisions to the source material in order to transform Dracula into a feminist revenge fantasy by centering the female characters and confronting the sexism in Stoker’s original.
Continue reading Classic Stage Company’s Dracula—A Feminist Adaptation