A Dowry of Blood is a sumptuous novel by S. T. Gibson, who asks us to raise an intoxicating glass to the vampire’s carnal nature and drink deep. Though it implies that that most famous vampire, Dracula, is one of its central cast, the true protagonist is Constanta, his vampire offspring and bride. Bram Stoker’s Dracula featured three such brides, nameless seductresses to terrify his Victorian audience; Gibson gives these brides voices and histories, turning them from objects of desire to characters with wills and desires of their own.
A lot of writers give endless thought to the logistics of vampirism: the who and where of killing, of moving around, of the laws the limit or enhance the vampiric life. Not so here. Constanta and her lovers never seem to fear discovery or vengeful mortals, or feel hemmed in by their nocturnal lifestyle. They kill with abandon, travel freely, interact easily with whatever humans they so choose. External forces rarely do more than displace them; only forces internal to their shifting relationships challenge and threaten them.
Most vampire novels are extremely grounded in places and times, especially romanticised ones. Anne Rice set a precedent for seduction-by-location with her Parisian revels and New Orleans mansions, growing sensuality from the ground up. Dowry of Blood eschews the heavy historicity in favour of a vague, lovely sweep across Europe, differentiating between Vienna and Venice only in the broadest of terms.
This may have baroque overtones, but it’s essentially an Impressionist book, painting with delicate dabs here and there, and then with sweeping, broad lines elsewhere. Time and place blur, faces emerge from the colourful palette of feeling rather than outward form. It’s a breathlessly emotional book, furious and horny and delighted, and always a bit mad. And anyway, who cares about painstaking detail when there are such bright colours to paint with? Red, of course being primary among them.
Though Gibson can occasionally stray toward the purple with her prose, it’s more in a “first novel” sort of way. She’s just so excited for and by her characters that it’s hard to critique any little instances of faux pas. They’re elegant, savage, and above all, grandiose. She doesn’t tie them to the minutia of time or place because they are so very out of time and place, creatures who defy mortality—and conventional morality.
I think it would be perfectly natural if Constanta were to struggle with polygamy or being in a polycule, but I also think it’s perfectly reasonable that she doesn’t. She slaughters humans like rabbits; even for an erstwhile churchgoer like her, what’s an open marriage to the toll of her dead? Her casual embrace of non-monogamy is refreshing, and I like very much that Gibson did away with the hand-wringing. Rice already did the tormented vampire, and the unrepentant one. We already know—oh, do we know—vampires under threat from hunters or from their own guilt. Here we see the vampire at home, at rest. Their natural habitat is luxury, and it turns out their natural inclination is to form groups, albeit rather dangerous ones.
I’m not only talking about the incestuous undertones of calling lovers “sister” and “father” and so on. This book is also about power dynamics and abuse of those dynamics. The unnamed “father” wields his power with a veneer of elegance, but he’s really a common variety opportunist and manipulator. “We feast on the ruins of empire,” he declares with a grand flourish, forgetting that it makes him a scavenger, not a sovereign.
This definitely seems like a book produced in 2020, not just because of descriptions of plague (they’re not overwhelming, don’t be deterred) but because of descriptions of a megalomaniacal narcissist who wants control at the cost of everyone else’s life and joy. There is a passage late in the book that really hit the nail on the head about the thousand violations of abuse, the ones that go unremarked as they grind you down or make you finally rise up.
In a strange and not-so-strange way this book is ultimately about the queer found family and about the bonds that grow in spite of and because of trauma. Gibson doesn’t belabour the backdrop because it is backdrop: the real drama and gorgeousness comes from the characters and their deadly, deliriously lovely desires.
A Dowry of Blood is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
A lyrical and dreamy reimagining of Dracula’s brides, A DOWRY OF BLOOD is a story of desire, obsession, and emancipation.
Saved from the brink of death by a mysterious stranger, Constanta is transformed from a medieval peasant into a bride fit for an undying king. But when Dracula draws a cunning aristocrat and a starving artist into his web of passion and deceit, Constanta realizes that her beloved is capable of terrible things. Finding comfort in the arms of her rival consorts, she begins to unravel their husband’s dark secrets.
With the lives of everyone she loves on the line, Constanta will have to choose between her own freedom and her love for her husband. But bonds forged by blood can only be broken by death.
