As Dracula is the most famous (or infamous) vampire of all time, there are copious amounts of lore about the undead Count of Transylvania and there are plenty of tales about the people and undead in Dracula’s orbit. In S.L. Gibson’s A Dowry of Blood, a story is revealed about one of his most long-standing brides / consorts / offsprings.
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.
Gibson tells the story as a second-person narrative from the point of view of Constanta, one in a line of brides for the famous vampire. Constanta’s story takes the form of a letter of sorts to her Lord, perhaps a confessional. The original Dracula is an epistolary novel, so it makes sense that a “rebuttal” of sorts takes a very similar format. Although unnamed in the body of the novel (as Constanta refuses to name him), events of the vampire’s past paint enough of a picture that the Lord Vampire is indeed Dracula. The novel begins when Constanta (who had no name prior to becoming a vampire) is seduced and turned to the undead just as she’s about to die after her family suffered an attack by bandits. She is completely under his spell, in love with him, from almost the moment she sees him. He gives her the gift of immortality.
Constanta knows what her Lord is, beyond just a Vampire. He is curious, he is always hungry, he hunts, and is full of lust. The Lord; however, does let Constanta have her own dalliances, in time. Constanta’s confessional details their travels across Europe, those travels are often as their true nature as undead consumers of blood is discovered by the local populace. Eventually, these travels lead to Spain where the Lord visits a friend, Magdalana, who becomes a second bride to the Lord. There’s an initial tension between the two Brides, but they find a common, growing disdain for their Lord. The Lord soon brings a young man, Alexi, a Russian actor, into the family as a third “vampire child.”
We see everything through her eyes, hear everything through her measured and elegant voice in a confessional. That everything includes the gaslighting she experiences, the captive nature of their relationship with their Lord as toxic, how each of the three “young” vampires are property, and are all cut off from the world. One thing all three of the Lord’s “children” are explicitly instructed to avoid is a locked room in their shared mansion. The Lord is a great mind, a scientist, and one of his pursuits is trying to discover the true nature of the vampire. Those abusive experiences help the Lord’s “made” family bond, and Constanta’s love and care for her sibling/lovers embolden her. If she won’t quite stand up for herself to her Lord, she will not allow those abuses to last long on her “siblings.”
Compulsive… that’s the word that comes to mind when I think of this novel. Gibson has lovely prose and the tale is told with both auras of relaxed prose as well as elements of urgency, but through it all, the narrative of Constanta’s confessional is powerfully compulsive, which is why I read this book in only a couple of days. Her tale is gripping and you want to see her overcome her abuser.
This book owes a huge debt to Dracula of course, but there’s a lot of resonance with the old folktale, “Bluebeard.” The Lord has had past wives and has a forbidden room. Between the prose and how a relatively young person was turned and brought into the Lord’s family, I felt a connection to Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire.
That said, Gibson has crafted a tale that has a great deal of modern sensibilities considering it set, at the closest to current time, a century ago. Immersive prose and powerful narrative make for a great story, and the heavy themes tackled in the story make for a dynamic novel.
Recommended
© 2022 Rob H. Bedford
Hardcover | October 2022
Redhook Publishing | 304 pages
https://stgibson.com/ | @s_t_gibson
Review copy courtesy of the publisher, Redhook
