Silver Under Nightfall

Let me state straight out: From the blurb I kind of suspected this book would not be for me. I received it as part of my GSFF subscription and I have a rule to read every book I receive through this so I gave it a go.

First off: I do not like lovey dovey vampires. They should be sleazy, yes, but the extremely sanitized version of vampires presented here was way too emotionally sensitive, way too twilightesque. I am also not a fan of love triangles - I find the teenage angst that tends to come through them just annoying. There seems to be a bit of renaissance on vampire novels recently, and vampires can make very entertaining protagonists. They can even work well as antiheroes, but I struggle with them as love interests as it tends to detract from their very base monstrous character. I can almost get the idea of wanting to subvert that, but that subversion has become such a cliché as to make it irrelevant and to me it just doesn't work.

My biggest peeve is the stupid weapon being used. I get that this is a fantasy setting and weaponry can be different, but fantasy weapons still need to be useable weapons. This just seemed like some ridiculous deus ex machina thing, and would in reality be completely impractical to wield. The ridiculous swiss army knife sword thing here was distracting and unnecessary and was used continuously just highlighting the entire dumbness of it.

Beneath all this cloyingly sweet angst and annoyingly dumb weaponry there was a story that had some interesting twists and politics. The conflict between the main character and his father was genuinely quite interesting and well worked, but there was so much in my face annoyance that I really struggled to enjoy this.

listen the author can call remy a himbo all they want but he is not a himbo in my heart. i feel like its mostly just that he doesnt understand politics and doesnt care to. there were a few moments where i could squint and be like yeah himbo energy but overall not really. he's lowkey annoying but i also liked him probably 70% of the time. i adore xiaodan and zidan though so i am sat for book 2. killing naji at the very end was sick and twisted actually. i did really enjoy this book though.

Well it's been on my currently reading shelf at 36% since November 2023 so it's obviously not happening.

DNF it is.