From V. E. Schwab, the bestselling author of THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF ADDIE LaRUE, comes BURY OUR BONES IN THE MIDNIGHT SOIL, a genre-defying, generations-spanning novel of vampires, sapphism and hunger --- for blood, for life and, above all, for freedom.

If there is one truth to history, it is that women have been underestimated at best, and oppressed and marginalized at worst. This goes back to 1532, in Santo Domingo de la Calzada, Spain, where Maria is peering down the metaphorical spyglass to a life determined not by her talents, her potential earning merit, or even how powerful or rich her parents are, but rather by how beautiful and chaste she appears. Though her crimson-red hair is widely criticized by her neighbors, the men in her village cannot help but marvel at the mystery and otherness of her appearance. So she is married off to a viscount more than a few years her senior.

However, Maria’s well-meaning parents have no idea that not only is she open to her marriage, she planned it, scoping out her to-be husband amid the other boring, mediocre men with decent wallets. But Andrés de Guzman, Viscount of Olivares, is not the only person she has scouted journeying into her small town, approaching the church in hopes of eternal forgiveness, in witness of eternal piety. No, she also has seen a mysterious, captivating widow, one who keeps her visage ensconced in dark fabrics, folded between shrouds. Sabine will be her ticket out of oppression and obedience. She just doesn’t know what it will cost yet.

Nearly three centuries later, in the England of the tonne and of Seasons and debutantes, another young woman comes of age. Charlotte has relished her life of close parents, gardens and books, devotion and love. But a brief love affair with her childhood best friend --- a woman, no less --- finds her thrust from everything she loves and thrown into the cutthroat world of the tonne, where only pedigree and virtue matter, at least for the women. Charlotte, who has always worn her heart on her sleeve, doesn’t just buck at the constraints of her new life; she is literally unable to fully conform and is therefore willing to do nearly anything to free herself.

"Captivating, spellbinding, and keenly attuned to our social issues and downfalls, BURY OUR BONES IN THE MIDNIGHT SOIL feels like the natural successor to [Anne] Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, a canon-defining lore that situates this time-honored trope in our world while paying tribute to all the works that came before it."

And then Charlotte meets a beguiling widow who seems to float just outside the social hierarchy in which she has been raised. When a young man comes to request Charlotte’s hand in marriage, she is forced to choose between a life of eternal damnation --- of her mind, her tastes and even her freedom --- and, well, a life of eternal damnation. When neither side means freedom, but only one means acquiescing to the tastes and musings of a man, just one choice is possible. It’s not the one her parents dreamed of.

In 2019, a similar story unfolds with Alice, who has always followed her sister’s lead in Scotland. Now, though, she has come to Harvard University in America for a new life, which she can define on her own terms. But on the night Alice finally decides to cut loose, to free herself from her sister’s shadow and from her own fears of being noticed, she finds not just love or even lust, but something much darker and more permanent: a gorgeous woman who leaves in her wake a hunger that will dictate Alice’s every move for at least the next century. Unlike the centuries of women who came before her, Alice is not ready to join the scores of women buried in the midnight soil. She wants to live.

If it’s not clear yet, each of these women is a vampire, a child buried in the midnight soil to emerge as a feral rose, a gorgeous flower of a woman that is neither more nor less than her human counterpart, but simply freer. Unlike the women of 1532, 1827, or even, perhaps most hauntingly, 2019, Maria, Charlotte and Alice learn to welcome the night, consume it and dare to walk in it as if they are men. But with that freedom comes life-changing choices, debilitating danger and, of course, men.

Schwab takes readers through Carnival, the London tonne, and even present-day hook-up and drinking culture as she examines not just history or even vampirism, but also the roles of women throughout time. As she demonstrates through each of her heroines, women have typically drawn the short straw, the one that condemns them to a life lived in visibility --- be it of the kind that means they cannot walk about safely in the shadows, or that no matter where they tread, they are always being watched, observed and judged. But rather than bend to this condemnation, Schwab flips it on its head, asking: But what if women ruled the night? What if their hunger for power was as blatant as men’s? And, most crucially, what if women got the chance to wield power?

But while BURY OUR BONES IN THE MIDNIGHT SOIL is certainly a work of fantasy and horror, it is not the idle wanderings of a mind divorced from reality. Schwab’s findings are not that surface-level. Instead, she actually watches (and forces readers to watch) as at least one of the characters is drained of her humanity, torn from the things that make her human, even when her blood does not. It is not in the shedding of our social bonds or our classist hierarchy that we lose ourselves, but rather in the shedding of our softer, more “womanly” traits that we also lose our compassion, our empathy, our willingness to see and ascribe value to the lives around us.

In terms of vampire lore, Schwab has not only made the phenomenon her own here, she also has crafted her own mythos that withstands the tests of time and logic, enriching her prose and allowing it to exist as something that stands eternal while still feeling fresh and new. Her vampires drink blood, yes, and they balk at (but still enjoy) a, ahem, decanted glass of blood here and there, but they are also violently, bloodsuckingly hungry, and some of her more violent scenes turned even this Anne Rice–loving stomach. Her heroines are vicious and near-evil, but they are also hauntingly, exquisitely beautiful. It stands to reason that three vampires created by the same author would be similar, but her talents are on full display here, meaning that each character is so distinct she could come from an entirely different book.

Paired with the centuries-spanning time leaps, this could (and even perhaps should) mean a narrative that feels incoherent or incohesive, but Schwab is deeply comfortable in this space, penning what is easily her best, most ambitious and most unique novel yet --- a vampire book that is as immersive as a life lived throughout centuries, but that also still feels brand new and exciting. I have never before seen an author so confidently and creatively navigate such different timelines and women, but Schwab makes light work of her task here. Even when there is not a central conflict driving the plot, you feel just as tense as if there was a murderer chasing down your favorite protagonist.

Captivating, spellbinding, and keenly attuned to our social issues and downfalls, BURY OUR BONES IN THE MIDNIGHT SOIL feels like the natural successor to Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, a canon-defining lore that situates this time-honored trope in our world while paying tribute to all the works that came before it.