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A review by mweis
An Education in Malice by S.T. Gibson
3.5
*I received an eARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.*
I adored A Dowry of Blood when I first read it so I was excited to see S.T. Gibson's take on Carmilla even though the dark academia aspect made me less excited about this work. An Education in Malice takes place in a remote Massachusetts boarding school in the 1960s and features the loneliness and sapphic yearning of the original.
Laura Sheridan is the new girl from small town Mississippi and gets drawn into the obsessive relationship between Carmilla, her academic rival, and their poetry professor De Lafontaine. I struggled getting into this book. Where A Dowry of Blood pulled me in right away with the atmosphere and prose, An Education in Malice had a lot of info dumps and some wishy-washy world building that left me pretty bored and then once I finally became invested in the plot, I felt like it wrapped up too quickly.
What I appreciate most about Gibson's work both here and in A Dowry of Blood, is the thematic explorations. This take on vampires really highlights the sensuality and power dynamics involved in traditional vampire lore.
Overall, I don't think this is a bad book but I think I had set my expectations too high after loving their first book, and I don't think this fully executed as successfully as A Dowry of Blood did.
I adored A Dowry of Blood when I first read it so I was excited to see S.T. Gibson's take on Carmilla even though the dark academia aspect made me less excited about this work. An Education in Malice takes place in a remote Massachusetts boarding school in the 1960s and features the loneliness and sapphic yearning of the original.
Laura Sheridan is the new girl from small town Mississippi and gets drawn into the obsessive relationship between Carmilla, her academic rival, and their poetry professor De Lafontaine. I struggled getting into this book. Where A Dowry of Blood pulled me in right away with the atmosphere and prose, An Education in Malice had a lot of info dumps and some wishy-washy world building that left me pretty bored and then once I finally became invested in the plot, I felt like it wrapped up too quickly.
What I appreciate most about Gibson's work both here and in A Dowry of Blood, is the thematic explorations. This take on vampires really highlights the sensuality and power dynamics involved in traditional vampire lore.
Overall, I don't think this is a bad book but I think I had set my expectations too high after loving their first book, and I don't think this fully executed as successfully as A Dowry of Blood did.