A huge thank you to HarperVoyager for sending me an ARC copy of 'Empire of the Vampire' by Jay Kristoff. These cookies allow us to count visits and traffic sources so we can measure and improve the performance of our site. Though I doubt that Jay Kristoff and his million copies sold will truly care at the end of the day what I have to say about it. Dior, Celene, and several other female characters take center stage in this book, with Gabe taking a backseat.

Spice things up with a duology or, with the amount of content, maybe split it into TWENTY NORMAL SIZED BOOKS? A story of legendary battles and forbidden love, faith and brotherhood, the Wars of the Blood and the Forever King, and the quest for humanity’s last remaining hope: the Holy Grail.Gabriel in turn reveals that after being excommunicated, he and Astrid married and had a daughter named Patience. However, the issue I have with the first half of Empire of the Vampire was how these curses were implemented. The character relationships- particularly Celene and Gabe, also get a lot of love, though external struggle is the name of the game in Empire of the Damned. I mentioned at the beginning of this review that I experienced both hell and heaven reading this book.

While I haven’t read a book exactly like this before, it still feels like an amalgamation of all fantasy books written by white men for white men. Just funny how two people can take the same piece of writing and take totally different things away from it!

Celene can be somewhat omnipresent and thus provides us with some missing information about the stories of several other characters, namely Dior. That doesn’t mean though that you can effectively rip off what the Davinci Code by Dan Brown, and no doubt countless of other books, have done before you. We welcome respectful dialogue related to speculative fiction in literature, games, film, and the wider world. I think what I am most impressed with is Kristoff’s ability to capture the modern vampire, who is erotic and sexy at times with the monster inside lurking underneath, just beneath the surface.

In true Kristoff fashion, it took turns I wasn’t expecting, blew my mind several times, and consistently broke and stitched my heart back together, ultimately advancing my therapy needs. The whole sample was intense, laced with a sarcastic humour as you find out more about Gabriel de Leon, Dior and feel one step closer to knowing why he is being help captive. To have been able to see myself in a character as timely as my own grief occurred was… somewhat indescribable.Also, the tension of the battles felt palpable because the villains of Empire of the Vampire (The Beast of Vellene and The Raven Child) were ruthless, terrifying, and powerful. Let’s be honest – there are only so many times you can use the line “life has been hectic”, or some variation thereupon before it becomes boring. Lingering mysteries set up in book one are wrapped up quite nicely as the vampire apocalypse threat is looming, and our main characters are all fighting to find a way to save the world. It borrows some of these qualities from beloved 80s-90s classics like Wheel of Time but moves significantly faster. I'm going to get them as ebooks because the weight of physical copies will absolutely break my bookshelf.