Yes, it's a predictable plot device, but the set-up was not the part that truly annoyed me. Really, what could go wrong? It's not like. The two heirs to a human Empire are pretty much flying through enemy skies. For reasons that literally scream 'It's a trap!', the court has sent not only Adele, but her younger brother as well on a tour to independent city-states to forge good-will.and kiss babies? Princess Adele is heir to the empire and I'd add quite the important figurehead, eh? You know, if I had someone that important I wouldn't send her off on some half-assed trip. Now it is 2020 and humanity plans retribution. The British Empire has uprooted and resettled in Alexandria.

Vampires, prone to douchyness, have taken over the northern regions of the world. In the year 1870 humanity has its collective ass kicked. Swooossh? And then chapter two shows up, slaps me around a bit with horrible description and subsequently hijacks the rest of the book. Or whatever noise an airship makes when it falls from the sky. It offers an intriguing What if scenario, and although there is a good chunk of exposition (needed exposition, of course) it ends with a bang. Now, I don't recall chapter one being this painful to read. I'm not evening going to touch on ebony black hair. For the sake of not imaging every vampire as some idealized aryan brotherhood member, I'm going to stake my bets on tall and statuesque. At least you'd hope with all hope that is the case. You have to read it a few times before logically deciding it referred to the former. Or did the authors mean tall and statuesque? The structure of that sentence is rather clumsy. Apparently every vampire is pale and blue-eyed. Three short paragraphs later (seriously, on the same page) you get: 'The tall female vampire with the long black braid.' PG. 'The female was tall and statuesque, but pale and blue-eyed, like all her kind, and wore her ebony black hair in a braid that hung long down her back.' PG 27 27 lackluster description makes its first appearance on stage. Perhaps I should have known how this song and dance would go when on PG. But there would be an abundant of paramedics worldwide scratching their heads in confusion at the sudden onslaught of alcohol poisoning. Although you could probably play The Drinking Game for every time a character is described as 'tall'. It does make you want to take out a red pen and start marking the bloody thing. Unfortunately, the rest of the wording for this novel does not offer unintended comedic relief. Who got all Tim Burton in my vampire novel?

I thought this was Vampire Empire, not Beetlejuice.

So you can imagine my response to this supposedly intended sombre scene when that gem of a line popped up. At best, I can name some bones, muscles and such and bullshit the rest. Now, I may not know the intricate details of the human anatomy. 'Adele's eyes bored into the back of the vampire.'

Vampire empire the greyfriar