Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff

It has been twenty-seven long years since the last sunrise.

Ever since, vampires have waged war against humanity building their eternal empire even as they tear down our own. Gabriel de León, half man, half monster, and last remaining silversaint – a sworn brother of the holy Silver Order dedicated to defending the realm from the creatures of the night – is all that stands between the world and its end.

Imprisoned by the very monsters he has vowed to destroy Gabriel is forced to tell his story – a story of legendary battles and forbidden love, of faith lost and friendships won, of the War of the Blood and the Forever King and the quest for humanity’s last remaining hope:
The Holy Grail.

Vampires are one of those tropes that refuse to go out of fashion. Fortunately, they find ways of reinventing themselves to create that evolution of the monster itself. Kristoff's vampires are evil, violent, pitiless and much more in the classical mold than some of the recent iterations (this is most definitely not twilight). These are blood thirsty monsters who treat humans as chattel. They are very much at the top of the food chain.

There has been a trend in recent vampire stories to take a more urban fantasy approach. This necessitates a hiding in the shadows - the vampires of recent years have been somewhat pathetic creatures who cannot stand up to humanity. Transferring the story into a fantastical setting is a smart move in that sense - it allows the vampires to be omnipresent, visible and helps brings their monstrosity to the fore. The world we are in has been recently cursed into a kind of semidarkness allowing the vampires to roam 24 hours a day (although their power grows in the true night). The vampires are on the rise and apparently unstoppable. The one thing standing in their way is an order of half-breed vampires determined to stop them. Their vampire half allows them to counter the vampires with their own abilities. Their one vice - they need to smoke the blood of vampires to manage their own hunger for blood.

Empire of the Vampire is dark, cynical and bitter. The darkness is pervasive - the atmosphere, the sense of despair, the imbalance of power. This is not a happy read. Some of Kristoff's idioms do get a little abrasive at times - I am all for appropriate levels of swearing, but the use here is extremely gratuitous. I do love his dark humour though. The cynicism that pervades this is delicious

Plenty of violence, epic and sweeping scope, nice little narrative framing. Not sure if it's as edgy as it thinks.

wow i'm definitely here for the vampire comeback

This felt like some sort of marathon. It was just so long - only Outlander and Harry Potter books I've read are longer - and I definitely felt like the editors could have chopped it up a bit more.

The vampire traits stick to the most common tropes (silver, sunlight, how to make more, etc.) but it's made unique with terminology, ancestry, and the half-blood (what become Silversaints) race. These are badass creatures.
I really liked Gabriel's snark and that he was a pretty multi-dimensional character, but that can't be said for the rest of this very swollen cast. You don't learn Gabe's real motivations for the latter events of the story until 700 pages in and then it becomes a bit of a sob fest with it ending abruptly when the sun comes up and a good chunk of the story left untold. There's some graphic sex but nothing I'd clutch pearls over but a lot of gore, swearing, and chockablock with religious idealization (it's technically a fictional religion but obviously Christianity of the most zealous kind).

While I did really enjoy this, I'm not sure if I'll continue or if I'll just let someone else read it and get the Cliffnotes version.