Like its successor, Dracula, Carmilla suffers from an ending that is anything but epic.
Set at a isolated castle in the Austria countryside, Carmilla is a horror novel in which the now teenage Laura recounts how she was preyed upon by the vampire Carmilla, and how Laura’s father and his friends eventually stop her.
I went into this book knowing nothing about it. But I deduced Carmilla was a vampire immediately, so when the big revelation came, I was not surprised at all.
Though, I was surprised how much lesbian subtext this book oozed. Carmilla professes her love to Laura and kisses her several times throughout and is possessive of Laura’s attention and affection to a disturbing degree, getting violent when Laura doesn’t do what she asks or dares contradict her. I found the whole thing toxic and perverse, when you consider Carmilla is over a century old.
I didn’t enjoy this nearly as much as Dracula, as I thought it dragged in a lot of places and had several chapters with little plot advancement. I also thought how they found Carmilla’s final resting place was a huge deus ex machina. I also thought the ending was even more anticlimactic than Dracula.
Overall, I thought this book was rather boring and don’t recommend it. I give Carmilla 2.5 out of 5.0 stars.