This book is part of Shaw’s Dr. Greta Helsing series. I have only read the first book in this series, but enjoyed it. (The others are hard to find.) Helsing is a doctor for the to the undead and other creatures that hunt the night (or chill in barrows or screech death omens or how at the moon).
In Bitter Waters, Dr. Greta Helsing, is attempting to spend some quiet time in the country with her husband Varney (the Vampyre) when a barrow wight turns up with a recently turned vampire. A recently turned eleven year old vampire named Lucy. (Turning a kid is something at happens only with extreme rarity in this setting and is completely horrifying to many of the vampire community. This would include Dr. Helsing’s husband and their entire friend circle.)
This leads to an attempt to find Lucy’s attacker while helping Lucy to adjust to being a vampire. We mostly get Lucy’s adjustments and emotional arc because this is a very “cosy” storyline, where a lot of the investigation happens offscreen and the case ascends several levels past our protagonists wheelhouse when Dracula takes an interest. (In this setting, Dracula is something of a community leader among vampires, or a leader of various vampire communities connected by a network of agents throughout Europe who report to him.)
Cosiness Factors:
- Incredibly embarrassed vampires who are embarrassed because an eleven year old child is reading extremely embarrassing books about them. (Not Dracula. Dracula is too old to care. Ruthven, the vampire in John William Polidori’s “The Vampyre,” is filled with embarrassment and anxiety.)
- Stress-baking vampires. (This is still Ruthven.)
- The necessity of explaining that what happened in the books and what actually happened are two different things to a child who is taking notes while she reads about the fictional version of vampires she’s living with or has encountered.
- The levels of caring each of the vampires in Dr. Helsing’s friend circle have for the books that were written about them.
- Everyone worrying about the kid, taking care of the kid and generally fussing over the kid. Who it turns out, was in foster care, being shuffled from one crappy home to the next. (Extremely authoritarian and restrictive of most of Lucy’s activities, but also extremely neglectful.) Everyone is outraged that she wasn’t allowed to read as much as she wanted. This is of course a valid take.
- An elderly barrow wight with arthritis and a lung infection due to extremely nasty barrow conditions he refuses to fix. There is a very minor plot arc where Greta’s husband has to talk the barrow wight into letting Greta do a consultation. (Because Varney owns the land the barrow is on.)
- The recurring theme of “just people” that extends from barrow wights to the various vampires, including Dracula.
This novella is a quick read, and I found it to be very engaging. This is a great addition to the series and I enjoyed it a great deal. (I definitely want to re-read the first book, and read the other books in the series.)
This review was based on a galley received from NetGalley.
Leave a comment