Empire of the Vampire

I've been meaning to read this book for quite some time. It's been staring accusingly across the room. But I'm still trying to find time to read right now and it's not the most sveltely of shapes, coming in at a weighty 730+ pages. I finally gave in, and I'm glad I did. This does invariably mean however that I now have to hunt down the sequel, Empire of the damned, as this is only the first part of the story, and that looks to be an equally weighty tome.

The story is set against an alternative universe, middle-ages era earth that has been ravaged by Vampires for the last 27 years, following an apocalyptic event that prevents the sun from fully rising. Vampires have since waged war against humanity, built up an unholy, eternal empire carrying out untold acts of nastiness and pointy-teeth savagery. There was once a special holy order, a brotherhood, that was dedicated towards the extermination of the Vampire threat, but with the fading of the light even the Silver Order could not stem the tide of the undead horde. Now only silversaint Gabriel de León remains, the last of his kind, Imprisoned by the very monsters he vowed to destroy. Forced into telling his story, that of humanity’s last hope, it is the stuff of legend, battles, blood, love and lust and the journey to confront the leader of the Vampire empire, the Forever King.

The story is told from the perspective of Gabriel as he narrates parts of his life to a Vampire chronicler, moving from his childhood and indoctrination into the silversaints, to his growing family and the hunt for the Forever King. Flitting between the various parts of Gabriel's life breaks up the story well, and is an effective way of drip feeding the exposition. Part of the book is very much a coming-of-age story, following Gabriel grow into the legendary figure he eventually becomes.

I like the feel and tone of this book, it's grimdark without passing into horror (despite being about Vampire), but is properly adult and can descend into quite brutal descriptions at times. Its quite uneven in pace however, the first part of the book, which has the majority of the coming-of-age bits, is a lot slower in pace, and it isn't till the second half of the book that we really get to the meat of the story. Some of it's a bit heavy handed too, and gets a little tiring, spooning on the "look how poor we were" and "look how badly treated I was" just a bit too much for my liking.

The depiction of religion (after all you can't have the Unholy without the Holy) is Catholicism in all but name, complete with saints, sinners, priests, churches and even a quest for the Holy Grail. The author does a good job of describing how corrupt organised religion can be, and how it's sometimes frequented by those who wish to exert their will, or peddle their questionable morality. Occasionally those in charge are as much the monster, just in a more disguised garb. But there are mixed messages too. A lot of the time Gabriel rails against god and all that is Holy, but at the same time he's using the God-given magic to kill the bad guys. This hypocritical duality speaks volumes on the nature of organised religion.

The characterisation of Gabriel is one of the highlights, even though his journey is the standard cliché of the zero to hero (with hidden magical powers), going from a more idealistic and somewhat virtuous silversaint, to a faithless addict who lives for vengeance and little else. Excepting that cliché, it's also a powerful exploration of loss and the effects on those who have suffered. Some of the other characters connected to Gabriel are also fleshed out fairly well, but some less so. Even less time is spent building up any antagonistic characters, preferring instead to treat the bad guys with more mystery. This makes it feel a bit like a DC universe story, where the bad guys are just some almost faceless CGI with minimal acting, things to just be there when the hero's need to prove how hero they are. These Vampires do come in a few flavours though, from the almost mindless animal that slathers and gibbers after anything still living, to the lordly elder vampire with special abilities such as stone-like skin, superhuman strength and sometimes powerful mind control.

As mentioned, this is only the first part of the story, so don't expect to read it in isolation if you want to know whether Gabriel does actually manage to kill the Forever King, recover from his destructive drinking habit, kills his jailer, or even find out how he got imprisoned in the first place. I'm hoping I will find out in the next book, but not having read it at time of writing, I really don't know. I do know that the author has a fondness for writing trilogies, so I'm not getting my hopes up that everything is resolved in the next book either.

On the face of it, I feel I should like this book a lot less than I do, with the occasionally heavy-handed religious depictions, clichéd character journey, unequal characterisation and pacing issues. But it seems greater than the sum of it's parts, the story is engaging and the quality of the writing is pretty decent. The author has a real way with words and a lot of his charisma embeds itself well on the page. Is it a perfect book?, absolutely not, but it is somewhat addictive and moorish, bit of a guilty pleasure read I'd say and if you can overcome the imperfections, a book to enjoy.