no one talk to me. WHERES THE THIRD ONE?!

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the free e-Arc in exchange for my honest opinion.

Holy! This second installment is still not for the faint of heart. Crude, grimdark fantasy at its finest. If you’re not a fan of sarcasm, this book is not for you. I couldn’t get enough of the banter, ate up every second of it. I found myself tearing through this one even with the story being so dialogue heavy. Kristoff has the gift of storytelling, I felt fully immersed and that I knew these characters personally.

Will definitely be impatiently awaiting the next book in this series!

If you enjoyed Empire of the Vampire, I can't imagine you'll be disappointed with Empire of the Damned!

I'm going to skip some of the background and 'what's the book about?' here because I can't imagine anyone would pick this up without having read Empire of the Vampire first (and if you're considering it, don't! Read EotV first!)

This book picks up right where book one finished and is told in roughly the same format: Gabriel is a prisoner and narrating his life story to his vampire captor. In book one we had two timelines (three if you count Gabriel in the tower). In book two, we only follow one timeline (two if you count captive Gabriel) BUT we follow that timeline from two different viewpoints! Gabriel remains the 'main' viewpoint, but someone else has their turn as narrator too - I won't say who to avoid spoilers.

I really enjoyed this format and there was one section in particular, towards the end of the book, when the two narrators are recounting their parts of the story simultaneously, that was just so, so cleverly done. From a technical point of view, this section of the book left me with such a strong admiration for the 'craft' of Jay Kristoff's writing that I wanted to particularly mention it.

So, what's new for book two?

We were introduced, in the first book, to the idea that there were four vampire 'houses', but we only really had to deal with one of them - the Blood Voss. In book two, we get to know one of the other major vampire factions, alongside a taste of the 'politics' between and within each faction - just because they're all vampires certainly doesn't mean they all get along!

We also get to see, for the first time, what vampires are like when they are on their own turf - ruling over their own little kingdoms. My goodness... there's some very dark scenes in this book, and Kristoff does a fantastic job of painting the whole bloodstained, horrifying picture. It's a great reminder of what's at stake, and what the rest of the world will become, should Gabriel and Dior fail.

We have some new characters and some returning characters: I'd probably say, with the exception of Lachlan, that none of the new characters interested me quite as much as the returning ones. Maybe that's inevitable, I've had an extra book to get to know them, after all, but I did find myself missing some of the 'old crew' who got less page time in book two. The new characters were very enjoyable, I do want to emphasise that, but I didn't find myself quite as attached to them as I did to the cast at the end of book one.

There's some fantastic emotional moments as well: we see character relationships come to fruition and we see characters grappling with the decisions and events of book one. It wasn't quite to the level of THAT scene in the first book, but I definitely found myself welling up more than once before I closed the book.

Overall, does it live up to the hype?

If you were a fan of book one, I think you're going to love book two. If you weren't keen on book one, however, I'm not sure book two is going to change your mind. It's very similar in style, tone and themes.

I think I'd probably say I preferred book one, but that could be because my expectations weren't as high and so it was more of a pleasant surprise. I do think this was a remarkably consistent sequel and the majority of fans are going to be delighted with it.