Reviews with content warning for Murder - Empire of the Vampire

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Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff

89 reviews

mauillustrations's review against another edition

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adventurous dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

Oh god… this book…

Alright, let me start this review by stating that, unlike many other readers who gave this book a low rating, I was able to somewhat enjoy the read. To a certain extent at least. Edgy, gothic, vampire stories are my guilty pleasure and I have a certain fondness for the cringy emo vibes the writing style gives. I’ve also read this book in a big vampire binge. I’m playing a Curse of Strahd game, which I am impossibly obsessed with, and I had just finished watching Castlevania (the animated tv show). So when I stumbled upon Empire of the Vampire, I was in the perfect mood for the kind of story I thought it would tell and I might’ve tunnel visioned my experience of it to satisfy my cravings.

I had fun with the general aesthetics and world building, and took interest in how the author explore the vampire mythos. I especially enjoy when vampire stories link the creature to nobility like EotV does. The different Vampire houses were an interest premise and I thought some of the quotes landed well when you don’t mind Kristoff’s emo writing style.

“There’s no misery so deep as one you face by yourself. No nights darker than the ones you spend alone. But you can learn to live with any weight. Your scars grow thick enough, they become armor.”

“But more, and truer still, there’s just no one with more to prove than the boy at the bottom of the pile. You feed a man your table scraps, he grows hungry long before he grows thin."

That being said, there’s still A LOT to criticize about this book…

SPOILER WARNING for both Empire of the Vampire and the Nevernight trilogy ahead.

First off, Empire of the Vampire isn’t very original. Now, that’s not always a bad thing, it doesn’t necessarily mean that reading it is boring or unpleasant, but it sure as hell feels like a lot of the overall plot was recycled from other works. The author himself said that it’s heavily inspired by Interview with a Vampire and The Name of the Wind, and it shows. There’s also a plot twist at the end that’s basically copy pasted from The Last of Us and when you think about it, the whole concept is also pretty similar to his Nevernight trilogy:

An edgy main character with unique abilities who’s of a rare species/kind with dark hair and pale skin and loves to smoke and swear goes into some kind of cult like organisation situated in a weird church to be trained as killers. The MC has a quirky companion who most people can’t hear and who often comments or advise the MC on their quest in a world where the day and night cycle is fucked up. There’s at some point in the book a sapphic relationship with somewhat explicit sexual content between teenage girls, one being a viking inspired character and the other being a very skinny, spiteful young woman. And finally, the storytelling is told as if from a book or memoir and there’s often comments from the narrator(s).

So yeah… that’s that for the originality…

Second, EotV is the book that was most clearly written by a middle aged man I have ever read. Without even addressing the blatant misogyny, the general way women characters are written is clearly to cater to the male gaze. All woman are hot, they're usually describe in way more details than man characters and this goes not only when they are introduced. When they speak, when they move, when they enter a scene, there’s almost always a comment on how they’re dressed, how their limbs move sensually, how their lips are blood red, their skin milk white, their figure curvy, etc… The violence - because this book is very violent and gory - feels likes it’s described differently when women are the victim. The narration focuses way more on the description of their wounds, their screams and/or their bodies than it does with men (though there is exceptions, just talking generally here). There’s one of the antagonists who’s whole gimmick is slaving young virgin girls, using them like animals and shields. There’s at least 4 named female characters who are raped (and many more general mentions of different degrees of sexual assault). Not to mention the fridging of the main character’s mother, sisters, wife and daughter, the overall misogynistic setting, and the countless “your mom” and prostitutes jokes.

Now, I’m not saying misogyny can’t or shouldn’t be portrayed in a story, a setting or a character. But EotV uses misogyny as an aesthetic. It’s there to make the world edgy, to portray the characters as assholes (sometimes in a quirky kind of way). It’s not necessarily portrayed as a good thing, there’s clearly an underlying implication that it’s a bad aspect of the culture and setting, but it’s never adressed more deeply than once or twice by a #girlboss character who throws a line like “girls aren’t just tits on legs”. Wow. Feminism at its finest…

There’s also a constant presence of oversexualization of any female character, especially, and uncomfortably so, underaged ones. I’ve already mentioned the focused descriptions and the sexual jokes, but it goes way further than this. There’s plenty of explicit sex scenes between minor characters, the book even starts with one. In the two timelines where the book takes place, first one following teenage main character and second one following the MC in his thirties, most of the explicit sex scenes take place in the underaged timeline.

There also random sexual descriptions or instances that happen in moments where I really feel is tonally inapropriate. For exemple, there’s a scene at one point where a vampire just starts to touch herself mid-combat, for no reason at all except that I guess there’s blood that has been shed? It didn’t bring the scene further, didn’t provide anything for the story or to the characterization of said vampire (who I believe we never see again).

“She ran her tongue along her teeth, bloody fingertips across the gaping wound at her throat, roaming down the hourglass of her body and pressing hard between her legs.”

To top it all, the main character is constantly struggling to keep it in his pants. Him being a pale blood supposedly makes him super horny and his inner dialogue is often reminiscing on how he’s hot and hard for whoever’s in front of him, on how his blood is boiling from the desire and so on - which becomes really weird when you remember he’s actually saying all of this out loud to some vampire who’s writing it all down on paper.

So yeah… as much as I felt enjoyment while reading it, the more I think about it, the more the experience sours. I read this book in 2021, before I started to put conscious efforts into analysing my reads and diversifying what I consume. 3 years later, I’ve very much developped (or so I hope) my critical thinking and I’ve now consumed more diverse stories. I know now that to enjoy a good story, I don’t have to turn a blind eye to what feels wrong. You want a good gothic vampire story? Read A Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson or Silver Under Nightfall|60321513|Silver Under Nightfall by Rin Chupeco or even Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda. These are stories who succeed in being gothic and macabre, epic and/or edgy, without forcing misogyny or bigotry on the reader. They might explore these themes, but they never use it as an aesthetic to make the setting dirtier.

Anyway! If you read until this point, props to you! That’s all I have for EotV. I’m still debating whether I’ll read the sequel or not. I’m still curious about the plot, but I dread having to go through another 700 or so pages of this r/menwritingwomen script…

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novel_obscurity's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Main character is challenging, and the book ends on a cliff hanger that was a bit predictable. Overall, not bad - writer does a good job with creating tension and fear!

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thetayloredpage's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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emyyrose's review against another edition

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adventurous dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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novelty_reads's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

ARC kindly provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

In 2021 there was no book quite as hyped up as Empire of the Vampire.

I remember seeing it everywhere. You couldn't escape it on Bookstagram/Booktok and die-hard book collectors were scrambling to get ARCs of it. With such hype, I was a little bit worried about this book. I was worried if it would meet such high expectations or fall epically flat.

Well, let's just say this:

Empire of the Vampire takes a while to get into. Or at least for me it did.

The book starts off with our main character, Gabriel, the last Silversaint, imprisoned in a cell by vampires, telling a historian, Jean-François about his life and how he came to be a living legend. This book, just looking at form alone, astounded me at how it goes between the interview-like present, Gabriel's early days as a Silversaint, and a few years before his current situation looking for the Holy Grail.

The book's first "part" (350 pages in) was all about the world building, setting up the scene and the ambience of the novel. While it was interesting, nothing really grabbed me after the first 50 pages (in part one). I think that's mainly due to the fact that I wasn't really connecting to the characters much.

But then we got to part 2 and all of a sudden, I understood why this book got so much praise.

The book's slower beginning makes up for everything it lacked in part 2 where all the plot twists happen and all the loose ends are tied up. All of a sudden, we got that closeness/connection we wanted from the characters and I started to really enjoy my journey with this book.

Where Gabriel started off as a stoic-sort of character, by the end of the book you see just how much he has been through. Honestly, I didn't expect that ending though which I won't get into for spoilers reasons but it made me understand his character and everything he's been through. I love it when books come full circle and all the pieces of the puzzle come together, not just plot wise but character wise too.

I also liked Dior though admittedly not as much as Gabriel. I've been told book 2 follows this character as well as another so I'll be excited to discover more about Dior as the series progresses. Also, I absolutely loved the bromance between Aaron, Baptiste and Gabriel and it honestly elevated the book so much! I'm excited to see them all again in Empire of the Damned.

This book was unlike any other books I've read before: it was dark, moody, bloody and hugely atmospheric and while I've read darker fantasy before, none were as gothic as this one. It also was the thickest book I've read in a long time, which for a person like me who read 300-400 paged books, this was basically double my regular length. That being said though, I would be very excited to read book two and I hope Gabriel gets his revenge on Voss. He really has been through hell and back.

ACTUAL RATING: 4.4 STARS

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