TL;DR Review: Bloody, brutal, and spectacular. Insanely action-packed with highly addictive characters and a gothic world that just keeps getting darker and more intriguing.
Synopsis:
From holy cup comes holy light;
The faithful hands sets world aright.
And in the Seven Martyrs’ sight,
Mere man shall end this endless night.
Gabriel de León has saved the Holy Grail from death, but his chance to end the endless night is lost. Drawn into an uneasy alliance with the mysterious vampire Liathe, Gabriel must now deliver the Grail to ancients of the Blood Esani, and learn the truth of how Daysdeath might be finally undone.
But the Last Silversaint faces peril, within and without. Pursued by terrors of the Blood Voss, drawn into warfare between the Blood Dyvok and duskdancers of the frozen Highlands, and ravaged by his own rising bloodlust, Gabriel may not survive to see the Grail learn her truth.
And that truth may be too awful for any to imagine.
Full Review:
Fuck my face.
Empire of the Vampire was a revelation last year, a book I had no idea would be so good but ended up rating as one of the best of 2023.
Knowing that, I went into Empire of the Damned with high expectations—and still wasn’t prepared for how bloody spectacular it was.
Empire of the Vampire set up this very interesting format to present the story: current-day Gabriel de Leon is a prisoner being interrogated by a vampire historian, and he gives us a recounting of events as he recalled them. However, as we learn in Empire of the Damned, he is an incredibly unreliable narrator, one whose memories of events and details are highly colored by his nature (arrogant, wrathful, drunkard).
The fact that it’s a recounting makes it easy to “break the fourth wall” because he can switch from narrating events to explaining some interesting minutia or shooting some sarcastic remark to his interrogator. It also adds an immense amount of color to every moment, because the entire story is flavored by his particular brand of irreverent arsehole.
Empire of the Damned picks up where Empire of the Vampire left off, following Gabriel in his journeys with Dior Lachance, the Holy Grail of San Michon, the one who will banish the “daysdeath” eternal night and bring back the sun to kill off all the vampires.
There’s just one problem: he’s just finished killing off all his fellow silversaints and is instead traveling with his very hate-filled vampire sister (who saved his life in Book 1). What could go wrong, right?
EVERYTHING.
That seems to be the Jay Kristoff motto. Whatever he can make worse, he will—and FAR worse than you could possibly expect.
Time and again, I was blown away by just how dark the story went. Just when it looks like there’s a bright spot of hope, a happy moment for a character, or a possible break in the fruitless hunt for sanctuary and answers, NOPE! The rug gets ripped out from under the characters—and often their legs right along with it.
To say I was enthralled by this story is an understatement. Late nights, early mornings, snatches of reading standing in line at the bank or walking down the street—I burned through this book in my every spare moment because I had to know what was coming next and just how he was going to make life even bloodier and more miserable for the characters.
Be warned: this book is not for the faint of heart. All the misery, death, gore, and suffering from Book 1 are dialed up ALL THE NOTCHES in the sequel. Where Book 1 showed you only the aftermath of the vampires’ conquest—the foulboods (zombies), the corpses, the burned-out villages, the children turned to undead and feeding on their parents and siblings—Book 2 takes you into the heart of the vampires’ lair, into a veritable feast of blood and death.
If you are squeamish about violence and gore, this is not the book for you. But if you’re willing to grit your teeth and bear with it, you are in for a truly wild ride that will have you ripping through the pages at full speed to get to that heart-breaking, soul-crushing, and truly spectacular ending.
6 bloody, beautiful stars!
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