Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil Review

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.