Reviews with content warning for Alcohol - L'impero del vampiro

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L'impero del vampiro by Jay Kristoff

60 reviews

teaforghosts's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-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

4.25

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atypicalley's review against another edition

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dark sad 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

2.25

I feel like I can tell you exactly what this author reads likes based on the lines I heard repeated — once or twice, almost word for word. Like… sorry bud, you can’t near-quote LOTR without me recognizing where it came from. So, this book is born of:
-Brent Weeks
-Patrick Rothfuss
-Bloodborne
-The Witcher
And that’s not necessarily a bad thing (though it gets a bit repetitive). I think the problem for me is, the author is using pieces of stories he loves without fully understanding why they worked in other instances.

We have a “novel in a novel” format, right? Straight out of Kingkiller chronicles, but with a less charming storyteller. But structurally, the time jumps are skipping the most interesting part of the story, and losing the sense of mystery that a time jump should build. I understood everything that’d happened between the 11 year time skip within a single chapter, with no mystery, no tension. But because we’d skipped the part where the love interest *became* the love interest, I also didn’t care.

We have a dark and gritty world, where all the women are overtly described and all the sex scenes begin or end with violence. Not for any particular *reason.* In fact, I’m of the opinion that the only sex scene that had any impact on the character and led to change happened when the MC was literally a child. It feels very Game of Thrones Season 1– aiming for shock and awe, ‘we can cuss on public television, we’re sooooo tough.” Oh, and also the horse dies. Because. It’s gotta be sad. But like… we never did any adventures with the horse? We’d literally just met the horse? Dark and gritty is all well and good— I knew what I was picking up. But that only works when there is some *opposite* to balance. Dark content is dark because it shows you the light first. Sadness is born of lost love. Pain is born of lost joy. But you only ever get the formers, and not the latters. So… I just didn’t care through most of the book. Probably would’ve DNF’d if I’d been reading physically.

The female characters are picked straight out of the Witcher. Hell, so is the main character. But the Maiden/Madonna/Whore complex is in fuuuuull glory over here, and it does get tedious.

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exteenawreads's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

3.5

(3-4 ⭐? can't decide) I have two wolves within me: one finger-gunning and saying "Niiice, hot slutty vampires" and the other screaming "The Bechdel Test! Misogyny! Fridging!! Gross obsession with sexualizing underage kids!"

So ya, I dunno.

I think the writing was excellent, the world was immersive and thrilling, and the story compelling. The battle scenes are expertly written and many moments are truly exhilarating. The prose is beautiful and poetic, the characters are memorable and unique. I really enjoyed what was basically a randomly generated DND party of diverse folks, forced together and fighting against all odds on a quest to save the broken world. It seems to heavily take inspiration from other media I love like The Witcher and The Last of Us, though that meant I wasn't too surprised by the direction. It was just so painfully obviously written by a man the feminist in me couldn't help but cringe often. And don't get me wrong, I get that the point of showing all of this violence and hatred of women is to highlight it as toxic and wrong. But the way it's written also glorifies it, and the story isn't about fighting the patriarchy - it's about a man out for revenge and glory, his enemy just happens to also be thinly veiled patriarchy and religious zealotry.

Ex: A vampire obsessed with teenage girls and turning them to be his unwilling slaves, literally pulling his carriage all half naked? = Evil, this is a villain, we don't root for him. But the writing itself directs the reader to see these things moreso as acts of great power and strength, and the simple truth of what a man would do if they were infinite and unkillable. This vampire is described very positively as beautiful, strong, something to be respected and feared. Yes he's a villain, but I'm also not convinced the author doesn't sort of revere men like him or at least see this as the average man's ideal. And the many examples of this throughout are hard to ignore.

Overall I did really like it, I just feel a little icky about it. And I truly could have done without the underage kid sexualizing. And the animal deaths :(

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jadehusdanhicks's review against another edition

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adventurous dark reflective tense slow-paced

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

3.0

An ambitious start to a series this book is a monster at over 700 pages. I found its format to be quite unique in its format of our tale being dictated as a story to the enemy of our protagonist. You see two sides of Gabriel , the darkened drunk who’s lost his faith, family and friends and the silver saint, national hero who still had hope and may have been the key to our problems.

With days death, the light is nearly gone making it perfect for the vampires to rise and walk in the day when they previously couldn’t. This story definitely focuses on worldbuilding to set the scene for the rest of the series, but also sets a tone of revenge between Gabriel and the Voss ruler. I enjoyed how intricate the world is, with nations broken down into main and indigenous areas as well as establishing a ruling religious system as well as opposing pagan beliefs.

From grief to religious trauma, death to homophobia, murder to betrayal, and more this book covers a lot of tropes and topics and can certainly be a hard read with its length and depth. For some it may be confusing to follow at points as we jump from the story back to a scene of our MC being made to tell the story for documentation so it isn’t linear in its timeline but it was a unique choice to format which certainly had me intrigued.

It’s a shame that kristoff is the author as honestly i enjoyed this and would continue the series but with his fetishisation of wlw minors and appropriating and criticising Māori culture in nevernight i morally can’t support him as an author and wouldn’t have purchased had i know this beforehand.

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sadspringroll's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark sad tense medium-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

I loved this book. The world it built was akin to the Witcher, bloodborne, and/or castlevania. I loved the characters, the world building, aesthetic, lore, diversity, fight scenes and reveals.

My only criticisms are the overuse of some French words/phrases. I liked most of them and thought it added depth and charm, but “ma famille” and others did grate on me. The first half definitely had a few too many sexual innuendos in the dialogue for me. Sometimes it felt like forced humour (imo). I didn’t like the interview method as the storytelling mechanism at first, but got used to it fairly quickly and began to enjoy it. Finally, Locked like a secret was a phrase I’d never heard before yet read at least 3 times, but I know a lot of authors are guilty of this.

So ultimately, if you hate French and aren’t keen on time jumps (or it’s the journey not the destination type stories) it may not be for you. But I can safely say this is a 10/10 book for me, even with its quirks.

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darialoana's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense slow-paced

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

3.75

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bohboh's review against another edition

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Not great writing. Mishandling of French and generally uncomfortable sexism / misogyny plagues it. My eyes hurt from rolling them so much at the descriptors for the supposed macho-manly Silversaint knights. I do not understand the appeal, and reading about the dozens of controversies surrounding the author online, I'm quite comfortable leaving this one DNF.

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