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creators

1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Kiste, Gwendolyn
   • bioText: Gwendolyn Kiste is the three-time Bram Stoker Award–winning author of The Rust Maidens, Reluctant Immortals, Boneset & Feathers, Pretty Marys All in a Row, and The Haunting of Velkwood. Her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in outlets including LitHub, Nightmare Magazine, Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, Vastarien, Tor's Nightfire, The Lineup, and The Dark. She's a Lambda Literary Award winner, and her fiction has also received the This Is Horror Award for Novel of the Year as well as nominations for the Premios Kelvin, Ignotus, and Dragon Awards. Originally from Ohio, she now resides on an abandoned horse farm outside of Pittsburgh with her husband, their excitable calico cat, and not nearly enough ghosts. Find her online at GwendolynKiste.com.
   • name: Gwendolyn Kiste
2. • role: Narrator
   • fileAs: Brentan, Carlotta
   • name: Carlotta Brentan

publishDate

2022-08-23T00:00:00Z

edition

Unabridged

isOwnedByCollections

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title

Reluctant Immortals

fullDescription

2023 Lambda Literary Award Winner
2023 Bram Stoker Award Finalist for Superior Achievement in a Novel

For fans of Mexican Gothic, from three-time Bram Stoker Award–winning author Gwendolyn Kiste comes a novel inspired by the untold stories of forgotten women in classic literature—from Lucy Westnera, a victim of Stoker's Dracula, and Bertha Mason, Mr. Rochester's attic-bound wife in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre—as they band together to combat the toxic men bent on destroying their lives, set against the backdrop of the Summer of Love, Haight-Ashbury, 1967.
Reluctant Immortals is a historical horror novel that looks at two men of classic literature, Dracula and Mr. Rochester, and the two women who survived them, Bertha and Lucy, who are now undead immortals residing in Los Angeles in 1967 when Dracula and Rochester make a shocking return in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco.

Combining elements of historical and gothic fiction with a modern perspective, in a tale of love and betrayal and coercion, Reluctant Immortals is the lyrical and harrowing journey of two women from classic literature as they bravely claim their own destiny in a man's world.

reviews

1. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     April 25, 2022
     In the meandering, miserable latest from three-time Bram Stoker Award winner Kiste (The Rust Maidens), vampire Lucy Westenra of Dracula, and a mysteriously undead “Bee,” Bertha Mason of Jane Eyre, live together in 1967 L.A.—until an offensively mischaracterized Jane Eyre, here cowed, beaten down, and in cahoots with evil men, arrives at their doorstep and frees Dracula’s remains from the urns in which Lucy has been imprisoning him. Jane then returns to San Francisco and Mr. Rochester, reenvisioned as a cross between Hugh Hefner and Charles Manson, who keeps a harem of barefoot women and forces Jane to join in erotic cult-worship of a revived Dracula. Lucy and Bertha conveniently fall in with a group of hippies as they work to rescue Jane and take down both evil men. The novel attempts to condemn misogynist abuse but delights in and eroticizes its depictions of female victimization, making it feel less daring and nuanced in its depictions of female resistance to gendered cruelty than the 19th-century novels that inspired it. Devotees of Dracula and Jane Eyre will be baffled by Kiste’s unrecognizable updates of the characters. For those unfamiliar with the originals, there may be some pleasure in exploring the unrelentingly grim atmosphere Kiste brings to 1960s San Francisco, but others can safely skip this.

2. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     November 1, 2022
     

     From Gwendolyn Kiste (Boneset & Feathers) comes the continuing story of two women practically ignored in gothic literature. Lucy Westenra and Bertha "Bee" Mason lived beyond the stories in which they were merely plot devices. The two women lived for many years in a decaying house in Los Angeles circa 1967. Lucy vigilantly guards the urns holding Dracula's ashes, while Bee does everything she can to ignore the supernatural siren call of Edward Rochester, Jane Eyre's problematic husband. But Dracula and Mr. Rochester soon rear their devilishly handsome heads during the Summer of Love, and the women travel to the Haight-Ashbury District to stop them. This historical horror can seem like a kitchen sink of different ideas, but Kiste pulls it all together with her superb worldbuilding and focus on the two dynamic heroines. Narrator Carlotta Brentan's voicing of Lucy, the tale's narrator, is noteworthy, bolstering Kiste's characterization of a woman who is cynical and slow to trust, but is endowed with a will that even Van Helsing would have admired. VERDICT Fans of gothic horror will appreciate this complex tale, which is ultimately a story about two women drawing strength from each other so they can each write their own stories.--James Gardner

     Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

popularity

0

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languages

1. • code: en
   • name: English

subjects

1. • value: Fiction
2. • value: Horror
3. • value: Literature
4. • value: Romance

publishDateText

08/23/2022

mediaType

Audiobook

shortDescription

2023 Lambda Literary Award Winner
2023 Bram Stoker Award Finalist for Superior Achievement in a Novel

For fans of Mexican Gothic, from three-time Bram Stoker Award–winning author Gwendolyn Kiste comes a novel inspired by the untold stories of forgotten women in classic literature—from Lucy Westnera, a victim of Stoker's Dracula, and Bertha Mason, Mr. Rochester's attic-bound wife in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre—as they band together to combat the toxic men bent on destroying their lives, set against the backdrop of the Summer of Love, Haight-Ashbury, 1967.
Reluctant Immortals is a historical horror novel that looks at two men of classic literature, Dracula and Mr. Rochester, and the two women who survived them, Bertha and Lucy, who are now undead immortals residing in Los Angeles in 1967 when Dracula and Rochester make a shocking return in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco.
...

sortTitle

Reluctant Immortals

crossRefId

8324219

classifications

awards

1. • source: Horror Writers Association
   • value: Bram Stoker Award Nominee
2. • source: Lambda Literary Foundation
   • value: Lambda Literary Awards (Lammys)

publisher

Simon & Schuster Audio

bisacCodes

1. • code: FIC015000
   • description: FICTION / Horror / General
2. • code: FIC027040
   • description: Fiction / Gothic
3. • code: FIC076000
   • description: Fiction / Feminist