A review by sympatheticdroid
Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu

dark mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

Sometimes its absurdity made it absolutely hilarious, but I think overall it's more about the dark romantic undertones than the funnies. The dark romantic undertones are between this weirdo Carmilla and this really sad girl Laura, both who you can interpret in a billion different ways. There's a lot of speculating to be done while reading, and even more to be done after you're finished. The length is short, it's in the public domain and the pacing is lightning quick so there's really not much reason to avoid reading it if you're at all interested in vampires, lesbians, lesbian vampires, historical queer fiction and/or historical fiction featuring women.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Emotional abuse and Gaslighting

Minor: Child death and Racism

Racism is minor the same way your seemingly okay acquaintance one day walking up to you, slapping you in the face and never referencing or repeating the offense would be a minor assault. To be explicit, a handful of unnamed brown characters show up as the servants of mysterious white women characters. The description in the book and commentary of other white characters paints these brown characters as being ugly and evil, and that is all the characterization they are given. It seems to reflect the views of the author. Once that scene ends you only ever see similar characters one more time as background characters in a flashback and there's no more overt racism anywhere in the book. I honestly highly recommend this novel, but I don't want anyone to not expect the racism. Every other warning is just standard vampire stuff.