2.5 stars

Dead Collections is aggressively miss-marketed. Its pastel cover depicts our vampire archivist protagonist Sol staring longingly into his paramour Else's eyes. Its blurb opens with the words “whirlwind romance” and goes on to describe the heartwarming tale of an archivist and a widow coming together in the face of grief. All of this marketing instantly captivated me and I was ready to be swept away by a heartfelt love story when I picked this book up. Boy was I wrong.

Unfortunately for me, Dead Collections was less a love story and more a depressing tone poem. Unlike a standard romance novel, the majority of this story was gloomy at best. Throughout we see Sol severely depressed and facing increasingly precarious life circumstances like latent and blatant transphobia at his workplace, being beaten up by fellow vampires and constantly being on the razor's edge of sunlight exposure. These elements took up massive swaths of the story I expected to be dedicated to the romance given the book's marketing. Don't get me wrong the romance is a part of the novel. We see Sol and Else's almost instant connection and see them become increasingly vulnerable with each other, especially as Else begins to realize they're trans. But because so much of the novel is dedicated to other elements of the story I struggled to fully connect with their relationship.

I’d like to make it clear that the presence of heavy subject matter isn't what I have a problem with in Dead Collections. There’s nothing wrong with writing stories about depressed people in difficult situations facing bigotry. But the choice to market this story as a romance when it doesn't follow the structure of a romance and prioritizes heavy character exploration over its romantic elements led to a disappointing reading experience.

When I attempt to remove myself from my subjective reading experience I can appreciate some aspects of Isaac Fellman's storytelling. Firstly, his take on vampires is unique. Fellman thoroughly explores the realities of what living would be like if the sun was deadly. Fellman captures Sol's intense anxiety about being caught in daylight vividly. The practical barriers to getting a job, driving a car or simply finding things to do to fill your evenings were fascinating to think about. On a thematic level vampirism was a well-rendered metaphor for isolation and otherness. The ways the world categorically refused to accommodate Sol spoke to a broader truth about marginalization and how it often alienates you from the world. Fellman also literalized Sol's internal feelings of wrongness through vampirism really well. There's an eloquently expressed sentiment throughout the novel about how being a vampire feels corrosive and Fellman resolves that internal conflict brilliantly.

Further, the way Fellman viscerally captures depression throughout Dead Collections is a feat worth praising. While I've derisively referenced this novel's gloominess I am actually impressed by the skill it took to render that tone. Fellman genuinely and intentionally evoked melancholy in me. A strength of Fellman's mastery of melancholy was just how rewarding it made Sol’s moments of joyful connection feel. My favourite moments in the book were Sol connecting with a trans man at a blood clinic and him DMing another vampire archivist. Seeing him finally interact with people who understood and cared for him after dozens of chapters of intense cruelty was affecting.

I will say however that these brief moments of brilliance didn’t dull the sting of other aspects of the story I didn’t click with. Namely, Fellman's writing style. Fellman’s prose was tedious more often than not. While I understood the poetic tone he was going for it was often overwrought. This was most detrimental during dialogue. Characters consistently spoke in an unnaturally elevated way and often articulated messy and complicated emotions in elegant maxims. Not only were these exchanges often overwritten but having people speak to each other in his way stretched credulity and made them harder to connect to characters as people.

In the end, I leave Dead Collections frustrated. While I appreciated elements of the story I can't forgive the tonal whiplash of its marketing compared to its content. There's likely an audience that will love this book and I fear the misleading cover and blurb will lead more people astray like I was.