Bloodlust & Bonnets

I’m just tickled that this book exists, y’all. You don’t quiet know this much about me yet, but the Regency era is my shit. Yes, it’s because of reading Jane Austen at a young age and then devouring every Austen Adaptation since, but also it’s just what I’ve become comfortable with.
Emily McGovern is probably better known for her Harry Potter spoof webcomic My Life As a Background Slytherin. This is an original story, however.

A few years ago, my friends and I were obsessed with Gail Carriager‘s books – up until that point I’d had an impossible time getting them to see how interesting the Victorians, Edwardians, and the Late Georgians (aka, Regency) were! But they took to Carriager’s books, so that’s how I was show more finally able to break through to them. If you, too, are especially fond of Carriager’s steampunk series’ – as well as the Brontë’s and Austen – then you miiiight want to pick up this comic.

Bloodlust & Bonnets is about a girl named Lucy who is searching for the Vampire Queen of London, Lady Violet Travesty, who easily convinced her that she was something special and would make a great addition. Together with the famous Lord Byron (from books!) and butch vampire hunter Sham, they constantly get in their own and accomplish very little.

I guess… That’s the thing that bothered me about this graphic novel. It wasn’t the simplistic art style – which as you can see from Emily McGovern’s other comics, she’s mastered the expressive stick-figure. It was just unnecessarily long and could have been wrapped up in under 200 pages. The jokes might have been funny at first, but I got tired of the whole thing long before the half-way point. I know opinions seem to be split down the middle, but I really do kind of regret wasting my time with this book, whereas a lot of other readers found so much joy in it – which in turn, makes me feel about for not liking as much. So I’m not going to try to discourage anyone else from reading it – like I’ve said previously, I’m exactly the right audience to appreciate this book, and yet it still wasn’t for me.

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A sort of strangely-and-randomly bloodthirsty gal, Lucy, teams up with a bounty hunter and, um, Lord Byron to hunt down a vampire lady, but they all have different motives for doing so. The schemes are all hairbrained, the plot twist are excellently twisty and convoluted, and the banter is fantastically witty. I. LOVED. It. Exactly what I was hoping for from the author of My Life as a Background Slytherin.

Lucy is a typical young miss of the late Regency who ends up falling in with Lord Byron and a bounty hunter named, Sham, as they attempt to defeat vampires who have thrown everything into upheaval.

This graphic novel is everything I wanted it to be and more. Full of cheeky humour that will delight any fan of Regency-era fiction, this is a fun, queer romp that occasionally leads to vampires exploding. It's so much fun and I'm not doing it justice in my summary or comments so if the premise even slightly sounds like your thing, do yourself a favour and pick it up. Highly recommended.

Vampire hunting (but what for?) GN just barely amusing enough to get through with increasing episodes of is-they-into-me as the nonsense piles higher and deeper and a Walter Scott and Byron rivalry goes absurdly ballistic. The art's featureless faces get so strange some characters could be taken for headless.

There are some clever bits and stupidly funny gags in the first half, but the book goes on a bit long for what it is -- an early 19th century British vampire slayer farce -- and loses momentum midway. As one character says at the halfway point, "It all started out so simply! Now I've got no idea who's doing what or why . . . I'm so confused . . . " The art is ridiculously stylized but actually worked for me.

I really love to see a Regency or Victorian young woman kick ass. I really love to see a woman fighting in a non-stereotyped way Boxing aside, I love to see a woman stage fighting. I don't enjoy real fighting of any kind, nor do I enjoy real or staged boxing, regardless of who is doing it. My affection for fictional fighting extends to literary and, apparently, graphic novel formats. This has the added bonuses of quite a lot of fake blood splatter and Lord Byron hamming it up. Plus, a castle with a personality. Loads of vampires, too.

Also check out McGovern's

A queer vampire story set in the regency period with Byron as one of the characters. Lucy is bored and wants something out of her life when she meets a vampire who offers her a new life, a different life, but not all is as it seems and between a sentient castle and an telepathic eagle who transports the characters around it's chaotic and interesting.