Blood Countess

"And if I was not deranged before, I have since succumbed."

(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through NetGalley. Trigger warning for violence against women, including physical abuse, sexual assault, and murder.)

But I see it. Just as I see Lord Nádasdy’s hand close around her wrist, the skin paling with the force of his grip. I can see how it hurts her, in the way her smile slides off her face.

For all the gold and silver in her coffers, in some ways the countess is just like me.

A woman, with a man’s cruel hand around her wrist.

***

And is it truly Ferenc’s abuse, I begin to wonder, watching the corded muscles in Elizabeth’s neck, the wild elation flooding her face with every fall of the switch, that casts her to show more these abject depths? Or might there be some black vein of malice riving through her, too, nothing at all to do with him?

But that cannot be, it cannot. I could not love someone evil, and yet I love her so dearly, shudder with yearning for her touch.

***

Anna Darvulia is just thirteen the first time she meets the Countess Elizabeth Báthory. She unwittingly chases her kitten Zsuzsi, freshly rescued from a pack of bloodthirsty boys, in front of her Lady's wedding procession - and, miraculously, lives to see another day.

Several years will pass before Elizabeth summons Anna to her side - or rather, to the bedside of her secret, illegitimate son Gabor, in the throes of a mysterious illness. Anna, the daughter of the village midwife and a skilled healer in her own right ("witch," whisper some), diagnoses it as an infected bug bite and delivers Gabor from the jaws of death.

Elizabeth rewards Anna with employment, and enough coin to feed her struggling family - first in the scullery, then as a chambermaid to the Lady herself. Despite the rumors about Elizabeth's cruel streak, Anna finds herself drawn to Elizabeth - so lovely, captivating, and mischievous. So like Anna herself, tied to an abusive man by the ropes of the patriarchy.

As Anna becomes more entwined with Elizabeth, she begins to see that the woman she loves is indeed the sociopath that everyone speaks about in hushed whispers in shadowy corners. She gets a front-row seat to Elizabeth's cruelty - like, a literal front seat - yet Anna stubbornly clings to the fantasy that she can fix Elizabeth, pull her back from the edge of depravity; or, failing that, temper her abuse, if only a little. But when Anna realizes that she is as expendable as the rest, she takes drastic action to end Elizabeth's reign of terror.

Very loosely based on the historical "Countess Dracula," Blood Countess is not exactly what I expected. For one, the honest-to-goodness, vampiric bloodletting comes pretty late in the story. (In some ways, this almost feels like Elizabeth's origin story.) The journey there is as much a psychological thriller as a slash-'em-up horror story.

Anna is a fascinating character, and her reactions to Elizabeth - her knee-jerk disbelief of the rumors, coupled with her justifications when she witnesses Elizabeth's rage for herself - feels a lot like contemporary excuses we make for men who do bad things: "Well, he's never hurt me personally, so he must be a good guy." or "He was provoked." or "But what about all the good he's done for women." Like, it was painful at times to witness Anna's journey to the truth; onto her, I projected the faces of Ghislaine Maxwell, or the women seated at Harvey Weinstein's table when he was so bravely called out by Kelly Bachman, Zoe Stuckless, and Amber Rollo. Handmaids of the patriarchy, if you will.

If anything, Blood Countess is an amazing case study of how abusers get away with it for so long. Elizabeth's gender and her (perceived) connections with Anna make it all the more complex and meaty - doubly so with all the red herrings Popović throws down about men behaving badly. Did Ferenc and Mr. Darvulia deserve to die? Probably. But sometimes women (especially rich white women) are terrible too. Elizabeth's masterful gaslighting of Anna was the icing on the cake.

Popović's prose is gorgeous and lush and dark and sexy. Horrible yet exquisite. It's like a rich piece of red velvet cake (decidedly not vegan), topped with not-fake blood icing. Your favorite Halloween candy, with razor blades hidden inside (just like mom warned you about!). Deliciously dreadful.

Come for the historical horror, stay for the doomed F/F, would-be/could-be Thelma & Louise-esque romance.

http://www.easyvegan.info/2020/02/11/blood-countess-by-lana-popovic/ show less

There are so many layers to this book that it’s astonishing. And even though this is a YA novel, Lana Popovic does not shy away from the abusive way women have, and still are, treated or the graphic nature of Elizabeth Bathory’s tortures, whether they be psychological or physical.

I have always been drawn to Elizabeth Bathory because women serial killers are fascinating to me, and to have one that got away with her killing spree for so long is astonishing. Even her punishment was softened because of her status. So what does that say about our society? Even though this took place hundreds of years ago, the same concept is still around; if you’re rich you can get away with murder.

Anna’s story arc is fantastic. By the end of the show more book she is definitely not the person she was at the beginning, and yet she still retains some of her better traits. I kept asking myself what I would have done in her situation, and there is no easy answer. Popovic seems to have a strong grip on the human psyche and is able to write questionable situations in a relatable way.

And the historical references are on point. You can tell Popovic did her research before writing a novel on one of the world’s most prolific women serial killers. And as an herbalist in training, I really enjoyed when Popovic included information on herbs for various ailments. I kept shaking my head in the affirmative because those would indeed be the herbs to use!

I’m looking forward to her next book in the Lady Slayers series, Poison Priestess, in early 2021, and am intrigued to find out who the Poison Priestess is. show less

It is no secret that I read what interests me in a huge swath of genres. I have my favorites, of course, but I try not to limit myself just because a publisher lists a book as women’s literature for example. There are some subjects for which I will move heaven and earth for the chance to read. Most of the time, my efforts are successful and the book is as glorious as I hope it will be. Other times, well, are not quite as positive reading experiences. Sadly, Blood Countess by Lana Popović is one of the latter examples.

I do have an unholy fascination with Vlad Dracul II and anyone or anything associated with him. Of course, Dracula is one of my all-time favorite novels. It stands to reason that I would want to read a novel about show more Elizabeth Bathory, the infamous Lady Dracula. I mean, who wouldn’t? So, to say I was really looking forward to reading Blood Countess would be an understatement.

The thing is, even if I tempered my expectations, Blood Countess would still disappoint. For one thing, Ms. Popović spends more than half the novel building up Anna’s and Elizabeth’s relationship. As a result, there is too little time devoted to the Countess’ malignant predilections. Plus, the ending literally comes out of nowhere. One minute, Anna and Elizabeth are the throes of a dangerous cat-and-mouse game, and the next minute, the cat rolls over and gives up everything. Anti-climatic doesn’t even begin to cover how inadequate the ending is.

I get that there is very little we do know about Elizabeth Bathory as there is very little hard evidence showing irrefutable proof of her killer ways. However, there are some aspects of her life we do know, one of them being the person who arrested and later imprisoned her. Except, Ms. Popović chose to use that person in a different capacity. When you could write almost anything about your story’s villain and have it be possible because no one really knows the truth, why would an author deliberately choose to use real-life people and change their allegiances? Days later, this still strikes me as an odd choice to make, especially because everything else about Bathory is open to you do with as you choose.

Finally, maybe it is the type of young adult novels I normally read, but Blood Countessis the rare occurrence where it was obvious I am not the author’s intended audience. Everything from the voice to the sentence structure to the word choices screams teenager. It matters not that Ms. Popović incorporates plenty of gore and violence into the story. In spite of that violence, it still reads like a tale for younger readers. In fact, you could almost liken it to a modern-day fable, one in which the heroine’s plight is a warning to readers about the dangers of lust and infatuation. It bears repeating that this is the last thing I was expecting.

To be fair, I was not expecting Blood Countess to be award-winning historical fiction. However, I was expecting a fairly grown-up story that contained a lot more suspense. I was also hoping to read a story that spent more time attempting to explain Bathory’s supposed penchant for violence. It was none of these. As such, I feel like I need to read a good vampire story now to ease my disappointment. show less

I have read biographies about Elizabeth Bathory, so reading this I saw that the author did some of her homework. I do wish there was an author's note to explain the readers this was a real person. Aside from that, the story told Anna her chambermaid was great. It's start off where Anna takes an innocent approach and before she knows it she is in too deep realizing how demented and abusive Elizabeth is. I did like that Anna had to strength to leave her. It was not a strong historic novel, yet there were some facts about her tortures infused in the story.

If you're looking for historical accuracy, this isn't the book. Blood Countess is almost a historical fantasy in the way that it plays around with the mythology, picking up details or putting them down depending on if they suit the story. A few descriptions of Bathory play around with the legends and stories about her, while her children with her husband are cut from the story completely.

We all knew that the main character, Anna Darvulia, saying "I'm going to bang Elizabeth Bathory. RIP to everyone else but I'm different" was going to turn into a disaster.

One thing I didn't care for was the disconnect between the prose and the perspective. With a first person narration, you're in the main character's head, what you're reading is show more supposedly their inner monologue. My issue was that Anna, while an adept midwife and herbalist, she's admittedly illiterate and that makes the expansive vocabulary of her narration seem slightly off. show less

Hello Darkness, my old friend. What began as pure, turns dark and deadly in this bleak fantasy. Anna, sixteen, is a budding midwife and healer. When her mother's age and weak hands make plying her crafts challenging, Anna takes on much of the work, hoping to earn enough to feed her family. It's challenging because her father, a cruel drunk, swills away most of the family coin. When Anna is summoned to heal a child, it begins a very dark, gory and frightening journey. It's one that is not for the faint of heart, but very fascinating and well crafted.

This is much more historical fiction than horror. The “horror” is in the real crimes committed by Elizabeth Bathory, but I think I was expecting something different from this book since I thought it was a horror. It is pretty slow and there were parts I wanted to just stop reading as I couldn’t figure out if it was worth finishing. I think it picked up for me in the last 3rd of the book, but I still wasn’t as crazy about it as I thought I would be. It doesn’t help that the protagonist is overly naive and not super likable for much of the book, I was internally screaming why can’t you tell that Elizabeth is evil!!