Empire of the damned by Jay Kristoff
My rating: *****
Genre: Fantasy
Tags: Vampires, Death, Dysfunctional family, Dark fantasy
This is the second book in the series, and I was given a chunk of the book to give a review, and I’m just going to say the instructions I’ve had for this are: ‘Keep the secrets. Guard the spoilers #DontRuinTheEmpire’, so my review will be with that in mind, not that I try to give spoilers normally!
I really enjoyed the first book in this series, and what I’ve read of the second one hasn’t disappointed! It follows on very shortly after the previous book, so you do need to read the first one, and my suggestion would be to read them quite close together, though there is a character refresh at the beginning, which I found helpful, and I only read the last one in October!
If you haven’t read the first book, then this bit is for you! Set in a world where the sun last shone nearly 3 decades ago, and so the vampires have taken a lot of control. Gabriel de León is a silversaint of the Silver Order, and this means he’s part of a holy order that gives their lives to killing vampires. The story is set when he’s imprisoned by vampires, and is the last silversaint, and being made to tell his life’s story. It jumps between different phases of his life, so some of the times are when he’s young and doesn’t know what he is, when he’s training, and when he’s on mission.
These are quite dark books, since hope is a very fleeting thing in a world where the vampires have so much power, and humanity is desperate to find a way to release the vampires grip hold, and that’s why I would say a tag for this would be dark fantasy. I’m not sure it’s dark enough to be grimdark, but potentially it is!
As I mentioned, I really enjoyed the first book, and I’m really looking forward to reading the rest of this book at some point, but what I read was very good!
I was given this excerpt in exchange for an unbiased review, so my thanks to NetGalley, HarperCollins and Jay Kristoff.