“It was the twenty-seventh year of daysdeath in the realm of the Forever King, and his murderer was waiting to die.”

This is arguably my best fantasy book (after the Simon Snow series, of course).

RATING & REVIEW: ★★★★★

It’s like if Castlevania, Interview with the Vampire, and The Witcher had a child (“…but Chereoge, that’s not how children work…” Well, you get the point, don’t you?). Only here, it’s the vampire conducting the interview, and the person being interviewed is our protagonist, Gabriel de León, vampire hunter, etc., etc. Trust me, we don’t want to go into his many titles.
The book ping-pongs between different timelines: present day (where Gabriel is currently captured by one of the vampire bloodlines, Blood Chastain, and forced to tell his story before his death) and the past (his life as a vampire hunter up until his capture).

In Book 1, we learn about Gabriel’s background. He’s what’s referred to as a “paleblood,” the offspring of a vampire and a human. They get partial powers from their vampiric side. There’s an order of knights (the Silversaints) whose mission is to find these palebloods and recruit them into the brotherhood. They train them into vampire-killing weapons. Gabriel is recruited as a young boy and trained into a cold-blooded killer, the best of the Silversaints (as protagonists are wont to be). During his time with them, he leaves a trail of vampire corpses, both royalty and commoners, in his wake, including one of the vampire king’s daughters.

He also falls in love with one of the sisters in the monastery and is excommunicated when it’s discovered he’s broken his oath. Following his excommunication, he retires with his wife-to-be in the middle of nowhere and puts his vampire-hunting days behind him. And they live happily ever after…

No. No, they don’t, because this is a Jay Kristoff book, not Stephenie Meyer’s.

Fabian, the vampire king whose daughter Gabriel killed, hunts him down and slaughters Gabriel’s family (wife and daughter). Gabriel swears to kill him even if it’s the last thing he does. And it absolutely could be the last thing he does because Fabian is not your run-of-the-mill vampire. He’s the oldest and strongest of all the vampire lords.

Speaking of vampire lords, there are five bloodlines:

Blood Voss (The Ironhearts)
Fabian’s bloodline. They have skin like steel, resistance to injury, and telepathy, allowing them to speak to or read minds.

Blood Ilon (The Whisperers)
They can manipulate emotions and, by so doing, push their will onto others.

Blood Chastain (The Shepherds)
They are faster than other bloodlines and also have the ability to shapeshift and communicate with animals.

Blood Dyvok (The Untamed)
They possess extreme strength beyond other lines and can use a vocal power known as “The Whip” to command victims.

Blood Esani (The Faithless)
The rarest, most powerful vampires. They have blood magic, i.e., the ability to control blood, and they are capable of burning other vampires with their touch.

In his quest to kill Fabian, Gabriel discovers there might be a way to end the endless night and vanquish the vampires forever, and the key is a girl—Dior, the “holy grail.” He puts his revenge on the back burner to save the world.

In Book 2, we follow him as he travels with Dior (and some other “friends” he’s made along the way) to figure out how she’s actually going to end Daysdeath, because so far all they have is a prophecy, and prophecies rarely give you a step-by-step guide. As they spend more time together, their relationship shifts into a found-family dynamic. He starts to see her as a daughter, but the thing with Gabriel is that people close to him tend to die, so I was in fact concerned for her fate.  

We learn more about the Dyvok bloodline, and if you thought Blood Voss were brutal, wait till you meet their deranged, depraved cousins, the Dyvok. I read a comment a few years back that said if vampires existed in real life, they would be like the Dyvoks (that is to say, they would not be the sexy, alluring, romantic characters pop culture has made them out to be, but rather horrific and callous and treat us like cattle, and I wholly agree).

As the interview continues in book 2, we also notice a brewing chemistry between Gabriel and Jean-François (the vampire conducting the interview). I mean, it was obvious in book 1, but Jay Kristoff ramps it up in book 2.
You can see the line between captor and captive start to blur, and honestly, I can’t blame him. Gabriel is a captivating character (albeit annoying), and I can see why Jean-François, in this situation, would develop what’s essentially Lima syndrome. This is, in fact, one of my favourite things in the book.

Somewhere in book 2, Gabriel loses the grail and, thinking she’s dead, resigns himself to his original vendetta, killing Fabian.

In Book 3, he learns that she’s not dead, but the biggest reveal is that WE learn Gabriel is an unreliable narrator AND a big liar. And Jean-François is, at this point, so in love with him (joking… sort of) that I can’t take this interview seriously anymore.

No, honestly, we need to wrap it up, stat. And while we’re at it, just kiss already, jeez!

There is a lot of death. Like I said, people around Gabriel tend to die. Mind you, he’s called “the last Silversaint, killer of the Forever King,” so you can imagine all the friends we made along the way are potentially going to die along the way.

But at least we end Daysdeath, right? RIGHT??

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If you want to be taken for a ride, this is exactly the book for you. You’ll feel everything, and by the end, battle-weary, you’ll be glad it’s over.

I rated the entire trilogy 5 stars. Some people would say the best thing about the book is the plot (a page-turner), or the world-building (so rich you get sucked in), the characters (Ash, Celene, Astrid, Aaron, Jean-François, Gabriel, to name some of my faves), or the writing (lyrical and very corny);  And yes, Jay Kristoff does all of those things exceptionally well, but the best thing about the book is that it has illustrations. Yes, there are pictures, and everyone is extremely hot.

This series took me for a ride and then left me at the gas station like that final scene from Tell Me Lies, but like Lucy, I will be going back after the dust has settled.
I hesitate to recommend it only because each book is about 700 pages long, but if you love a good fantasy series and don’t care about length, stop what you’re doing and go get a copy. You’ll thank me later.