Author V.E. Schwab’s characteristic lyrical and poetic writing from “The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue” returns in her newest release, “Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil.” The novel hit shelves on June 10 this year and is set in the same world as Addie LaRue.
This novel explores the impact of immortality on Maria and Charlotte’s humanity, how time weathers away their empathy and kindness. While “Addie LaRue” was rooted in the hope and desires of humanity, “Bones” demonstrates how immortality does not prevent a person from losing everything that makes them alive. It is a novel that does not know its own genre, taking on fantasy themes, a literary fiction writing style and the pacing of an epic.
Schwab initially described the book on her Instagram as following “toxic lesbian vampires,” and toxic they undoubtedly are. “Bones” follows three women’s stories: Maria, Charlotte and Alice, all of whom are turned into vampires — or, as the novel puts it, “buried in the midnight soil” — during a different century.
The first point-of-view character, Maria, kills her abusive husband along with his family and the vampire who turned her. She later goes on to kill hundreds of women throughout the book in the name of satisfying her hunger, becoming the same abusive authority figure she once feared with no regret. The development of Maria’s character was done masterfully, and left me both empathizing with her past struggles and desire for a meaningful life, yet disgruntled with how she handled that trauma.
Charlotte, in turn, attempts to reckon with her hunger by killing men who “deserve it,” though the cracks in her logic eventually rise to the surface. Throughout the novel, she excuses murder and destruction in the name of love and fails to take accountability for the pain she was directly responsible for. We see the passing of time harden her soul just as much as Maria’s. Her character, though initially more empathetic and kind, was not spared by the hardening of time, still eroding her humanity. Schwab proved that no one was safe from the slow death of becoming immortal, not even Charlotte.
The novel does not attempt to excuse the vampires’ behavior, and this is its strong point. Rather than twist the characters’ actions to appear justified, to make revenge acceptable and death reasonable, “Bones” tells the women’s lives simply as they are, leaving readers to draw conclusions. It left me empathizing with their personal pain and still recognizing the inherent wrongness of their existence.
The strength of the messaging in “Bones” is diminished only by its length and unnecessary metaphors. Schwab’s writing goes from pretentious but empathetic in “Addie LaRue” to just excessive in “Bones,” and the power of each metaphor is diminished by another in the following sentence. The metaphors are heavy-handed and go from insightful on their first mention to exasperating on their 10th.
The excess backstory and side characters distract from the momentum of the plot and destroy the pacing of the novel. There are whole sequences and plotlines that could have been deleted, or at least accomplished within a chapter or two rather than the first quarter of the book.
As slow-paced as the first three-quarters of the novel are, the final sequence is filled with tension, determination and fear. The ending is ambiguous and purposefully so. Characters meet their end in satisfying ways, and the writing adopts a subtle and significantly more impactful method of descriptions that call back to important themes throughout the novel. The dichotomy of life and death, breath and silence, justice and revenge, culminates effectively while leaving threads open for interpretation.
If you make it through the first half of the book, the ending is worth it, solely for the way it prompts readers to consider the themes and unanswered questions. You will finish this book itching with the urge to talk to someone about it. And, for what it’s worth, vampires are so back.
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