Reviews tagging 'Blood'

Das Reich der Vampire by Jay Kristoff

132 reviews

swally2005's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Excellent. This book does take some time to get pulled into, but if you stick with it, it is definitely worth it. The tale starts off with Gabriel de Leon, an infamous vampire hunter, who happens to be half vampire himself, captured in a prison cell and being implored to tell his life's story to a vampire historian named Jean-Francois of the Chastain vampire bloodline. This book is one night of Gabriel sitting in a cell and recounting his life, while the vampire historian records it. 

Gabriel's story jumps back-and-forth between different time periods in his life, as well as back to his present reality; so at first, this can be quite overwhelming as you still don't really understand what's going on, but you get used to it and things start making sense as the story goes on. The world-building in this book is excellent, and the storytelling format is quite engrossing once you get past the initial confusion. This book also uses many French words, and some of them may be hard to figure out the meaning of, based on context alone, so be prepared to have to look up a few. This can be more than a little challenging to do if you are listening to this via audiobook (which I was), as you kind of have to guess on spelling. 

Speaking of the audiobook, I'm not sure if this was just on my version, or if this issue was present across all audiobook platforms, but I borrowed this from my library through Libby, and there were several instances in this book where the audio would cut off part of the sentence. It became annoying after about the 10th time it happened, so I tracked down the e-book in Kindle Unlimited just to see how much I was missing, and was able to verify that it was usually just the first word or two of the sentence, so it's nothing major, but it was annoying nonetheless, and was an issue that was prevalent all throughout the recording. 

Minor audio issue aside, I am very much looking forward to continuing on with Gabriel's tale in the next book, as he does not finish telling it yet.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Cursing, Death, Gore, Violence, Blood, Grief, Murder, Alcohol, and War

Moderate: Bullying, Child death, Homophobia, Sexual content, Slavery, Toxic relationship, Islamophobia, and Religious bigotry

maxella_'s review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

A clear case that modern literature still has hope because of Jay Kristoff.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Body horror, Death, Blood, and Grief

cambion's review against another edition

adventurous dark reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cursing, Death, Gore, Violence, Blood, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Addiction, Child death, Drug use, Sexism, Slavery, and War

thelibraryskeeper's review against another edition

adventurous dark tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

The world building in this book was insanely well done. I felt fully immersed in the world and the magic system. I also really appreciated the style in which the book is presented. As the main character doing an interview essentially. The only reason I tool off 0.5 was because I found somewhere between 50%-75% the book felt like it was dragging before it immediately picked back up. I really enjoyed the story and am looking forward to checking out book two!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Child death, Death, Sexual assault, Violence, Blood, and War

dria510's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Screaming. Crying. Throwing up. WTF did I just read. Jay why did you do this to us. Be warned this book will break you.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Drug abuse, Gore, Violence, Blood, Grief, and Murder

faehistory's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

A well-written take on vampires that walks the line between horror and fantasy. Gabriel manages to be a flawed character who never quite crosses over into being unlikeable and I found myself emphasising that even when he makes poor choices. The setting manages to be dark and bleak without crossing into so dark you find yourself apathetic. 

Some of the bigger twists you can perhaps see coming if you have read a lot of fantasy because they fit the narrative conventions of this kind of book but are still well executed and some do take you by surprise. 

There is a really interesting thorough line about the difference between faith and organised religion which ties into Gabriel's main arc. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal death, Child abuse, Death, Homophobia, Torture, Violence, Blood, Grief, Religious bigotry, Death of parent, Murder, and War

Moderate: Child abuse, Physical abuse, and Abandonment

Minor: Classism

chaptermaggot's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Animal death, Violence, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Alcoholism, Child abuse, Child death, Cursing, Death, Gore, Homophobia, Sexism, Blood, Grief, Religious bigotry, Death of parent, Outing, and Alcohol

Minor: Bullying, Drug use, Rape, Torture, Pregnancy, and Classism

elskede's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Gore, Sexual content, Torture, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Alcohol, War, and Injury/Injury detail

florian's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gore, Violence, Blood, and War

Moderate: Animal death, Homophobia, and Grief

Minor: Rape

laraloops's review against another edition

adventurous dark funny sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I am very torn on this book. On one hand I enjoyed some of the vulgarity and unabashed horniness. On the other the sheer brooding masculinity put me off at times - I feel that there were some very very well used tropes in this one and I feel that the fact I have already seen things like The Last of Us and The Witcher made me feel like those aspects of the story I've already seen before. It's when the story diverged from these elements that I enjoyed the book more. Aaron de Costes story-line I especially enjoyed

and the fact that he did not die at various parts of the book was a surprise and probably the only reason I continued to be honest.

The aesthetics were cool, tattoos with powers and blooborne like themes were a plus. The art was also a great addition to read and see a nice depiction of the scenes and characters. 

I think at the end of the day this book was just not my cup of tea and not what I was feeling up to reading. Like an good shonen anime that just didn't click with me. I do think though that the length of the book really dragged, it took me longer than usual to finish it and 700+ pages just felt like too much. The blurb at the end of the book that I mistakenly read without realizing it was the next book did get me interested to see how the second book goes so when it's available at my library I'll probably finish it as well. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia, Sexual content, Slavery, Violence, Blood, and Religious bigotry

Moderate: Pedophilia

Minor: Rape