Vampires have slowly but surely started making their way back into popular culture. We’ve seen them reappear in plenty of media: the catholic guilt mindfuck of Midnight Mass or the seductive new take on Interview With a Vampire. Perhaps you’ve seen TikTok clips of the off-broadway show Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors. Did you notice that Viz is suddenly reminding everyone about Vampire Knight, even putting the anime up on YouTube for free (which is wild, considering the first time I watched the series was in 3 parts per episode on YouTube with fansubs—what a full circle)? Or maybe the Twilight resurgence has pulled you back into its sparkly embrace—did you pre-order the ColorPop makeup line? Or was it the double release of Princess Weekes and Contrapoints on YouTube breaking down the Twilight phenomenon?
I’ve seen and felt the vampire resurgence over the past few years, but nothing fully grabbed me and made me go, “Oh, we’re so back.” With the growth of queer and diverse horror across all ages, though, I knew it was a matter of time. I just needed something dark, addictive, queer, and slightly uncomfortable to pull me back in.
And that’s where An Education in Malice came in.
Laura Sheridan is ready to thrive at Saint Perpetua’s College. It’s 1964 and she can taste the opportunity that affords her—traveling from her quiet southern roots to Massachusetts, experiencing freedoms she’s never allowed herself to consider, all in the name of honing her craft in an isolated academic setting. It doesn’t take long, though, for Laura to realize she’ll need to brandish the darkness inside of her to get ahead as a poet and as a student.
Carmilla’s immediate hatred for Laura—and the attention the new student is getting from the mysterious professor, De Lafontaine—thrusts the two into a dark academic rivalry, dripping in secrets and tension thicker than blood. As the girls fight for their teacher’s affections, they fall deeper into the dark world of Saint Perpetua’s College. Secrets reveal themselves in the moonlight and between pages of books. Carmilla and Laura discover that what they have in common, and what their dark tension truly means for them, may be the very thing that will lead to their survival. However, De Lafontaine is there, watching them around every corner. How much are Laura and Carmilla willing to sacrifice for their academic ambitions?
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An Education in Malice
If it isn’t immediately clear from the names of our two main characters, An Education in Malice is a dark academia retelling of Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu. Unless you are into the queer history of vampire tales—or you were on the right corner of the internet in the 2010s when a Carmilla web-series exploded onto the scene—you may miss this detail. It’s possible that the nod to being a retelling was missed by me due to reading via audiobook, but there hasn’t been loud acknowledgement in the marketing or within the book itself that this is based on an existing media. This may have been intentional: as a reader familiar with Carmilla, there were some story beats I knew would happen, and it led to some predictability, particularly due to the shorter narrative of a novella. The retelling still had a couple of moments that went differently than I expected, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a retelling, and you know that, at some point, vampires need to appear, Carmilla needs to become one, and Carmilla and Laura’s academic rivalry will need to transform into a dark sapphic romance. If you are unfamiliar with the story, An Education in Malice is still able to stand on its own. In fact, not knowing the original story may work in Malice’s favor; the twists and turns feel more unpredictable.
Even with my familiarity of the Carmilla tale, the atmosphere S.T. Gibson creates cannot be denied. The setting stands as a character of its own. The walls of Saint Perpetua’s College trap both students and reader as the story progresses; you can feel a tangible difference in the brief instances our characters are outside of its reach. Gibson is smart in including flashes of time outside of De Lafontaine’s influence; as a reader, you miss it, too. It’s in these moments that men appear, and they’re obviously there for distraction and folly. This sapphic story makes it clear: The safety for queer obsession lies at the school. You understand how intoxicating Perpetua’s is, because you want to return to it as well.
The inclusion of De Lafontaine is also a strong strategy: This professor with an inappropriate hold over her favorite students is dangerous whether or not they possess a supernatural backstory. Before the vampire-of-it-all takes over the narrative, the threat of losing De Lafontaine’s favor, or never gaining it in the first place, hovers over our two main characters like a guillotine hungering for blood.
S.T. Gibson includes a list of content warnings at the beginning of the novella that I recommend reviewing. The text does not shy away from creating discomfort with its reader. Personally, I was unsure if I could handle the inappropriate nature of De Lafontaine’s teacher-student relationships, particularly with Carmilla. However, it becomes quickly clear in the narrative that the romantic tension between the two of them is one-sided. Carmilla would do anything for De Lafontaine, but De Lafontaine is not interested in taking everything; the professor needs her for her blood, not for her romantic affections. She entertains what she must to survive, but her thrall doesn’t cross lines that are automatic noes for me as a reader. It’s shocking to be able to say that this dynamic has nuance, but S.T. Gibson managed to get this former teacher to keep reading with the reasoning behind De Lafontaine’s obsession with Carmilla and Laura.
An Education in Malice is a dark academic retelling of Carmilla that uses its sapphic roots to create an addictive setting with high stakes for its main characters. It whispers its secrets to you to hold as you read, and readers who love the dark underbelly of small, close-knit academic institutions will be more than willing to keep those secrets to themselves. It can be predictable if you know the original story, but S.T. Gibson’s novella has a seductive sapphic atmosphere that works to keep readers under its thrall.
An Education in Malice is published by Redhook.
