Happy Queer Media Monday!
Today: Consecrated Ground by Virginia Black
This randomly came up today, and actually, it goes really well with the season.
(The book cover, showing a crow.)
Consecrated Ground is an independently published horror novel. In its world, vampires have taken over everything, and are kind of holding humanity hostage for their blood. Opposing them are witches: Binder witches spell the earth to protect it and keep vampires from entering, while battle witches travel around and actively fight the monsters.
Joan Matthews comes from a long line of binder witches, but defied all tradition when she left her home and became a battle witch instead. Now, many years later, she returns to her hometown to bury her father. What she finds is a town besieged by vampires, the magic barricade failing in unheard of ways, and the leaders of the town fighting among each other. She also finds her ex-girlfriend, Leigh Phan, who has her own secrets. Using all her magical knowledge, Joan throws herself into the fight, trying to protect the town she was born in.
It is a well-written book, with a good writing style, and a story that keeps you captivated. Often, independent books are so wonderfully imperfect (affectionate), but with Consecrated Ground, I had at no point the feeling that anything could be changed to improve the quality. The story goes some rather dark places and has this overlying tone of quiet despair and claustrophobia, as the vampires close in on the little, mostly deserted, town.
I have done a review of this book for Queer SciFi, which you can find here. The book is available on Amazon.
Queer Media Monday is an action I started to talk about some important and/or interesting parts of our queer heritage, that people, especially young people who are only just beginning to discover the wealth of stories out there, should be aware of. Please feel free to join in on the fun and make your own posts about things you personally find important!
