Book: Milkteeth by Caitlin Starling
Reviewed by Rallie X
Rating: 5/5
This book is an incredible example of how the truly monstrous can be used to unveil uncomfortable truths about the real world.
Milkteeth offers a deconstruction of bodily autonomy, specifically the bodily autonomy of mothers of infants and young babies who are expected to be available at all times for feeding (absolutely no bottle feeding allowed here) and anything else the child might need (gone from the house to take care of something for more than an hour? She's a terrible mother who's abandoned her children). Beatrice's body doesn't belong to her, it belongs to the vampire coven and to their freshly turned offspring. When she tries to take back some autonomy she's punished by her children (you missed lunch ☹️) and the leader of the local vampires who effects a patriarchal ownership over her as broodmother and as individual.
I loved Beatrice, and I love how desperately vampire her relationship with Bhattacharya* is - the women are drawn to each other through different forms of wanting but ultimately both on some level desire to control and consume the other. And the way Caitlin Starling writes the three baby vampires (who are like, let's be clear, full adults going through a stage of vampiric infancy not literal human babies) is a cool look at the different reasons one might be turned into a vampire and the trauma that would absolutely be part of shaping person as they transition from mortal to immortal. This isn't a second puberty, this is a second birth after the person you were has died.
This book is bloody, it's gory, it's full of body horror (Beatrice describes herself as being swollen with blood all sloshing around inside like a tick which is totally disgusting, and there's a decent amount of very descriptive organ eating). But ultimately it's a great addition to the vampire-as-allegory collection and if you can stomach the gore I think the exploration of autonomy is well worth it.
*If I have the name (or spelling) wrong it's because I only have the audiobook and the book description just calls her "an OBGYN".