Empire of the Vampire Review

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.

It has been twenty-seven long years since the last sunrise. For nearly three decades, vampires have waged war against humanity; building their eternal empire even as they tear down our own. Now, only a few tiny sparks of light endure in a sea of darkness.

Gabriel de León is a silversaint: a member of a holy brotherhood dedicated to defending realm and church from the creatures of the night. But even the Silver Order couldn’t stem the tide once daylight failed us, and now, only Gabriel remains.

Imprisoned by the very monsters he vowed to destroy, the last silversaint is forced to tell his story. A story of legendary battles and forbidden love, of faith lost and friendships won, of the Wars of the Blood and the Forever King and the quest for humanity’s last remaining hope:

The Holy Grail.

From the New York Times bestselling author of the Nevernight Chronicle, Jay Kristoff, comes the first book of an astonishing illustrated dark fantasy saga.

I hate this title so much I've started to like it.

General Impressions

The HYPE for this book, am I right? It can be summarized in three words: tragedy after tragedy.

"Empire of the Vampire" was one of those books, that I dove into the day I got it and two seconds after I read the synopsis. Now, for those that have seen this edition around or even held or own one, this book is a behemoth and it feels like it but I finished it in less than three days, so even though there are a few parts that I had to push through and it does feel its page count at times, I flew through it.

EotV is the story of Gabriel de Leon, the last silversaint, member of a religious order whose purpose was to eradicate monsters, told through his own words to Jean Francois, a vampire and archivist to the House of Chastain, one of the great vampire families vying for power, at the time of his incarceration.

We don't know the details of how Gabriel was caught, only that he killed an important vampire and while detained and waiting for his execution, had his brooding interrupted by Jean Francois who told him that House Chastain was interested in writing down his story before killing him and that was not up for debate. So after a lot of pulling it out and measuring it between the two men (the homoerotic tension!), Gabriel eventually does.

That relationship between these two men on opposite sides of the war, where one is in complete control of the other's comfort is one of the most important and funniest parts of this book, even if their interactions can probably be added up to only a few pages long. Jean Francois is the one not only forcing Gabriel to tell his story, but through him, the author is able to make fun of Gabriel and even the novel itself by pointing at all the cliches and beloved tropes his story falls into. He is also the one making sure that the reader understands what is going on by forcing Gabriel to provide him with all kinds of background, and the reasons he gives him to why inside the story made me laugh out loud several times.

Personally, I would have liked it if their relationship had been further developed instead of a back and forward of the same insults which got old very fast (not mentioning the big chunk in the middle of the book in which he simply disappears). They didn't need to be written as friends but I would have loved to see the little hints of understanding that they had, stroked into something that resembled trust or respect because it would have made that last whiff of hope and the way it's taken way even better. But after reading a few books by this author, I'm more than halfway confident that he won't let that go to waste. This is a man that delights in the screams of pain of this readership too much for that.

One of my favourite things about EotV was that it jumped back and forward in Gabriel's lifetime, depending on if he felt strong, high or drunk enough to go over some of the hardest chapters, and this is a Kristoff book so it gets very dark. He also offered more or fewer details depending on his mood so some parts, particularly towards the end, feel rushed. (I personally think/hope that the details omitted will be of importance in the next two books since they concern people close to Gabe.) From the little I've written about Gabriel, you can suspect that this is a book filled with cursing. Well, honey take those expectations and multiply them by five hundred and then you will come close to halfway to how filled with profanity this book is.

Even if you are unsure about the author or his plot themes there are two things here no one can say Jay did not accomplish: writing beautiful enough to very soon grace the skin of a lot of people and a world-building so interesting and vast that you mourned every place you left. Yes, even if there were times in which the French/ Scottish inspired characters and places were too close to reality to suspend my disbelief or when the religious dogma didn't hold up under scrutiny as well as it should, those moments never lasted long when you accounted for all the thought it was obvious the author had put into the gastronomy, the weather, the geography, the history, the religion ...

I think that the biggest complaint I have plot-wise is that the books and pop culture moments where the author took inspiration from were sometimes too obvious. I won't mention what scenes exactly but the ones I recognized were the James Bond torture scene, horse scene in Red Rising, the deer from The 100/ Snow White and the Huntsman, Jesus' female descendency from The Da Vinci Code and by far the biggest similarity was that Gabriel reminded me of Castlevania's Trevor, sometimes word for word (with some Alucard aesthetic mixed in). Those were only the ones I recognized but from skimming Goodreads reviews I know that some people clocked a few others as well so this is not only in my head.

The absolute, and I mean the ABSOLUTE best part of this book for me? Under all the aesthetic, shirtless moments and cursing, this is a book about the loss of faith and the hole it leaves inside you. With the prevalent religion in EotV being a reimagining of Catholicism, a lot of its faults and history are present here.

Conclusions

EotV is quintessential Kristoff so if you hate the author or his previous books, I don't think you'll enjoy this if you even dare to pick it up. If on the other hand, you are a Kristoff lover, this is his best to date.

The sense I got reading this was that little was written down without a lot of thought and the parts that hadn't been written down were going to matter even more in the next two books.

Faith, gender, sexual orientation, addiction, grief and so many other difficult themes were featured through its many pages and Kristoff approached them all without fear. He didn't get all of them right all the time, but at least he didn't shy away from them. Those are the kinds of problems that perhaps would have been raised after another round of editing but I don't know what happened behind the scenes and I'm pretty sure, at this point, he does what he wants.

I, for one, will be reading the sequel.

Rating: 4/5