Unrivalled fantasy author V. E. Schwab dedicates her newest work “to the ones who hunger—for love, for time, or simply to be free.” I hardly need to tell you that The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is an exceptional novel, but it is also one that spoke to me personally. Addie leads a fulfilling life despite the asterisk of a Faustian bargain. When Luc reappears to taunt her, she regularly refuses him, because she got what she wanted — a chance to see the world and freedom from a miserable, nonautonomous life — and is simply managing the costs.

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil illustrates essentially the same construct, but it brings the matter of the cost into sharper, bloodier focus. Three women from three different eras are dissatisfied, and become vampires. Two of them were facing a future as nothing more than wives and breeders. Two of them technically chose to be “buried in the midnight soil,” while one did not. They all kill to survive and kill to feel something. An ethereal poem about being made one of the undead is shared within Schwab’s vampire society: 

“Bury my bones in the midnight soil

plant them shallow and water them deep,

and in my place will grow a feral rose,

soft red petals hiding sharp white teeth.”

The narratives of Maria in 16th-century León, Charlotte in 19th-century London, and Alice in modern-day Boston are told in a uniquely layered and non-linear format. But even before this, they are all bound by the very concept of being a vampire. All the vampires depicted in Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil reckon with the violence they enact to survive, and how their “deaths” come in a much worse way. But they still form something of an underground global community that supports one another in leading existences of love and pleasure.

First, Maria: As advertised, she’s wild, and she’s alluring. She carefully teases the man she wants to marry, thinking he is her ticket to a better life, but finds that there is no winning when she is his property, and he strips her of freedom and companionship. But once Maria has tasted power and tasted blood, there is no stopping her. Having always hated her common name, she changes it to Sabine and starts killing her way through time. You come to realize that there is something very twisted about Sabine, but she is compelling to read when you know what she has suffered, and she seems to be taking back what is hers.

Charlotte is written with a softer filter; a debutante in Regency England, her life also revolves around her being prettied up to be sold as a bride. Lottie is heartbroken after being rejected by her best friend, but her surprisingly accepting mother assures her that people like her find love eventually, to hell with everyone else. Yet this desire for love is Lottie’s fatal flaw. With Lottie, there is guilt and regret when being a vampire isn’t actually what she wanted. She describes all the women she meets over the next couple of hundred years with a lover’s touch, highlighting their own rebellions and passions.

Alice is the outlier of the trio, as she is born into the 21st century and speaks to a more modern frustration with life. Alice comes across as a moderate personality, but suddenly experiences years of rage boiling over when her life is destroyed. Her sections are also the only ones that include distinctly structured flashbacks, while she is at an impasse in the present. Overall, Schwab’s flexibility with how individual sections and the sequence of the chapters are technically put together creates a natural, freeverse harmony.

What’s fascinating about this sanguinary book is that the main characters (with maybe the exception of Alice) aren’t presented as good people, but there is a longing in Sabine and Charlotte that we empathize with. Of course, Alice has only just become a vampire in this story, and we can imagine that she, too, will make ethically dubious decisions over the next few centuries. What this book has to say about the cost of personal freedom, and if the people who go to extremes to take what the world has denied them are to blame, comes to a non-answer, demanding the reader continues to think about it.

Schwab’s prose is wicked and enticing, in a thoroughly empowering way of making you momentarily feel like you can take on the world. For instance, Sabine says to Lottie: 

“The world will try to make you small. It will tell you to be modest, and meek. But the world is wrong. You should get to feel and love and live as boldly as you want.” 

Yet, the writer also conveys the sadness of fleeting joy and one’s life spiralling away. In a passage that captures both Lottie and Alice’s voices: 

“Alice. Scottish. Gentle. Tastes like grief.

She reads it twice, three times, till the lines become words and the worlds become letters and the letters break apart and she still can’t understand how her entire life has been reduced to six words in this small and sloping script.”

Schwab also writes the experience of being turned into a vampire as very disorienting, when I’ve never really felt the subject’s fear during transformation in other vampire fiction. In this initial, confusing phase, the subtle differences in how each woman reacts to her new circumstances indicate what is to come.

Male vampires appear throughout the story, but this is undeniably a feminine narrative. All three main characters are also gay, and when they live for centuries, the women who pass through their lives as romantic partners each contribute to the careful construction of the wounding main theme. Every one has her own ideas about autonomy, anger, and pleasure, making for a kaleidoscopic view of being a woman across the globe and the centuries.

The magic system itself of this fantasy implies being rich more than it goes into it — some rules concerning the powers and weaknesses of vampires come up, but the magic isn’t so much the point of the story. Notably, vampires aren’t truly immortal, as they begin to rot and lose more of their human selves. The message is clear: even for the physically immortal, meaningful existence is ephemeral, and they must live well while they can, making it all worthwhile.

Schwab excelled in this with The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue as well, where the magic certainly made the story enchanting and lured in fantasy nerds like me, but the themes are the main event. This is a darker story, and suggests that the world hasn’t given these women any good options. Vampires know this better than anyone, but still find some personal power and happiness. The characters are buried in the midnight soil and grow back deadly but beautiful, with the ability to fight.

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is out today – you can order your copy HERE