this is a list of books i am recommending to ryse. you can like. read it if you want i guess. and then i shall be recommending these books to you too.
✨the everlasting, by alix e. harrow this book is magnificent. it's a fucking masterpiece. i don't want to talk too much about it because i read it with next to no idea what it was about (tho it was on lists of "lady knight" books i saw so i knew there was that). it's got the time travel/multiple time periods thing bury our bones has. it's also het, not gay, but the romance is SO GOOD i do not care. it's a book about the power of folklore in shaping a nation, and about power in general and how to wield it. it's about watching someone you love die over and over again. if you read one book, make it this one.
✨the god of endings, by jacqueline holland my absolute favorite vampire book. this is a book about love. not romance, love. it also features multiple time periods. it's about a woman, who currently goes by collette, who has been a vampire for over 100 years, and the people she meets and loves and the trauma she faces in her strange new life as a vampire. her hunger is getting out of control, which is a problem because she is now a preschool teacher.
holland wrote this book when thinking about her children, because she felt horrifically guilty that she gave them life in a world that can be so cruel. this is her way of working through that guilt, and how you can love someone so dearly and have to accept that you cannot stop them from being hurt by the world. i find it very hopeful and uplifting.
(does the dog die? a lot of animals do, including cats, which is hard for me personally lol)
✨hungerstone, by kat dunn this is a carmilla retelling. the main character, lenore, is married to a steel magnate, and her marriage has become loveless in part due to the fact that she never got pregnant. she's trying to politic in the domestic sphere to make herself valuable to her husband, despite not giving him an heir, and barely holding it together when she meets carmilla. women and girls in the village start behaving like they're possessed by hunger, and lenore begins to feel that way as well. i don't recall if they ARE vampires or if the vampirism is just. entirely a metaphor for female rage. but it's good!
✨blood on her tongue, by johanna van veen another historical vampire novel with lesbians, this one leaning fully into gothic horror. lucy travels to attend to her twin sister, sarah, who is suddenly ill with a strange disease that set in after a body was pulled from the bog near her husband's estate. yup, another shitty sexist husband! this one is pretty gross at times, and the atmosphere is tense and brings up questions of personhood. what makes you you, your memories, or something else?
i spent an annoying amount of time before i got the book trying to find out if the lesbians were the twin sisters (because i can't put that past gothic horror) before i got the book, so i'll just tell you: nope. there's another woman. no incest. and the dog does not die!✨the red winter, by cameron sullivan oh my god did i love this book. historical horror/fantasy. it's about sebastian, who has a demon in his head he has conversations with (and somehow has immortality, for reasons unknown to himself and the demon and also the reader), and decided to go help with slaying the beast of gevaudan. that's an actual historical beast that supposedly terrorized the french countryside in the mid 1700s, and the origin of the werewolf myth.
sebastian wants the beast to feed the demon in him, because eating anima give him power. he ends up falling in love with a lord's son, and they basically fuck their way across the countryside in their pursuit of the beast.
there's also the multiple time periods (due to said immortality). the way the story falls together is such a fun read. there's footnotes that explain historical context, but are also mostly just really fun character bits since it's all written in first person.
(does the dog die?: yes. a lot of animals die horribly. i didn't find it too upsetting though, somehow? also sebastian has a succubus as an indentured servant and while he claims the two of them care a great deal for each other, he treats her like shit so i don't really believe that. i think it's a testament for how good the book is that i love it so much despite that.)
✨as many souls as stars, by natasha siegal another historical fantasy with multiple time periods, but this one isn't about vampires. cybil has incredible magical power but is also cursed, and lives an isolated life where she is not allowed to study magic like her father. miriam is a demon (basically) who makes deals with humans in exchange for their souls. because cybil's soul is so bright, miriam agrees to a deal that allows cybil to reincarnate, so her soul grows even more powerful, so miriam can reap it in the future.
the lesbians are TOXIC in this one, but unlike bury our bones, the toxicity is mostly just between them. also, miriam is a woman in so much that she is mostly woman shaped but isn't human so she doesn't really care. you get it. i loved the resolution to the cat and mouse game, too. the magic is interesting (basically, cybil gives part of her soul-light to the shadows so they'll do things for her) and the historical details gave me so much delight. frankly, this is the book bury our bones wanted to be. and it doesn't even hit 350 pages lol.
