FAWN'S BLOOD

Queer teens get caught up in the fight between vampires and slayers.

When white-presenting trans girl Fawn’s best friend, Silver, fakes his suicide and becomes a vampire, she follows him across the country to Seattle. Even though Silver was dating someone else, Fawn loved him and doesn’t understand why he would just leave without her. In Seattle, Rachel, a queer white vampire slayer, finds her life and purpose completely upended when she’s turned into a vampire without her consent. Her mom is a leader among the vampire slayers, who kill without remorse, regardless of whether their vampire target feasts on willing or unwilling humans or is registered and drinks only their government-provided blood rations. Rachel tries to prove her allegiance to the slayers by acting as an informant and being a guinea pig for Daylight blood, a new synthetic product, but she starts to question everything she’s been taught. When Fawn’s and Rachel’s worlds intersect, they have to decide who they want to fight for. While there’s compelling complexity to the queer and trans characters and themes, which Schrieve explores both head-on as well as allegorically, and the vampire lore is unique and intriguing, the story as a whole is overstuffed and unfocused. Fawn’s and Rachel’s alternating narrative voices sometimes sound too similar, and the large, diverse cast of secondary characters and many plot threads slow the pace.

Thematically appealing and relevant, but the execution is muddled.