An Education in Malice by S.T. Gibson Published by Orbit on February 15, 2024
Genres: Fantasy, Horror
Pages: 352
Format: ARC
Source: Netgalley
Goodreads
Sumptuous and addictive, An Education in Malice is a dark academia tale of blood, secrets and insatiable hungers from Sunday Times bestselling author S.T. Gibson, author of the cult hit A Dowry of Blood.
Deep in the forgotten hills of Massachusetts stands Saint Perpetua's College. Isolated and ancient, it is not a place for timid girls. Here, secrets are currency, ambition is lifeblood, and strange ceremonies welcome students into the fold.
On her first day of class, Laura Sheridan is thrust into an intense academic rivalry with the beautiful and enigmatic Carmilla. Together, they are drawn into the confidence of their demanding poetry professor, De Lafontaine, who holds her own dark obsession with Carmilla.
But as their rivalry blossoms into something far more delicious, Laura must confront her own strange hungers. Tangled in a sinister game of politics, bloodthirsty professors and dark magic, Laura and Carmilla must decide how much they are willing to sacrifice in their ruthless pursuit of knowledge.
Thank you to Netgalley for this eARC in exchange for my honest review.
I think it’s important for me to mention that I didn’t love A Dowry of Blood by S. T. Gibson. Reading reviews on Goodreads had me feeling like an outlier in my apathy. Nevertheless, I went into An Education in Malice with excitement and curiosity. Because dark academia x vampires sounds too amazing to pass up.
Initially, I didn’t know that this was a retelling of Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu until I reached the halfway point. I quickly read Carmilla, which was a short and engaging read, to better equip me for enjoying this novel. Unfortunately, I don’t think it really did much for me.
My issue lies with how I am told everything rather than being allowed to experience events through the eyes of the MC. Attempts to create a mysterious and gothic vibe ultimately led to a slow-paced story; many interactions are just told to the reader as an afterthought, thus hindering the reader from actually connecting with the story or the characters.
And honestly, I just didn’t care about any of them. The romance in this novel was contrived and more insta-love than this dark, brooding, passionate affair that I imagined it would be. The characters themselves had no real personality or depth to them; this was more apparent through their boring interactions. De Lafontaine interested me at first but she turned out to be immature, jealous, and just lacking in every way. For a character that is supposed to be able to awe all those she encounters, I saw very little of that in the story.
To make matters worse, the vampire elements never got to shine. It felt like an afterthought or a subplot, which is such a shame.
So here we are, folks. This novel had a lot of potential but the execution let it down. It had a very slow pace, far too much telling vs showing, and lacking depth both from a character development perspective as well as from a thematic perspective. To be honest, Carmilla by Le Fanu had me more engaged than this story.
