Silver Under Nightfall

I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm a vampire girly at heart. Having never read Twilight or anything by Anne Rice, I'm not sure, but I was eager to jump into this to get a taste for that sweet, sweet vampire life. Unfortunately, this wasn't it. It was 200 pages too long, had too many tropes, and couldn't settle on a consistent tone, all while having a choppy, unsatisfying story.

In Silver Under Nightfall, we are following Remy, a vampire hunter in the kingdom of Aluria, son of a renowned vampire hunting duke who kind of hates him. After Aluria strikes an alliance with one vampire court, Remy is roped into allying with two engaged vampire lords, Malekh and Xiaodan to find the source of a mysterious, undead plague that is affecting both vampires and humans alike. Through this, he grows closer to both Xiaodan and Malekh and eventually becomes their familiar (butt boy). That honestly sums up this entire book, but it is 500 pages long.

Okay where do we start. Characters were bad. Everyone was completely one dimensional with very little growth. Remy was bombastic, hot headed and dumb, always getting into trouble. His dad was an asshole. Xiaodan was warm, loving, kind, and quick to trust. Malekh was a stubborn, hard headed know-it-all. And none of these characters changed at all throughout the entire book. There was nothing dynamic about them, and this is one of the reasons the romances felt undeserved. No one grew into a character that was lovable, so it felt weird that they all started to like each other as time went on when none of them were changing. The romance between Xiaodan and Remy was rushed and boring, and the romance between Malekh and Remy was waaaay too slow and never developed into anything that was compelling aside from the fact that they all had a lot of sex with each other without a lot of emotional connection. And I'd argue the attempt at justifying this polycule was like half the book, so in between weirdly paced action sequences, it was a lot of arguing and bitterness, that then turned into a lot of arguing, sex, and bitterness.

Yeah, so the pacing. This story was a bit of a mess to begin with. I feel like it was poorly developed, so there wasn't really a clean way to map it out into a cohesive narrative. The intersection of vampire politics, human politics, attempted world building, and the sloppy inclusion of numerous personal storylines made this tedious to follow. Too much going on, too much jumping around, and not enough attention devoted to any one thing. There were moments where twists were revealed that were so unsatisfying because I had no investment into that subplot because it was sloppily attended to. Action sequences and character deaths had no weight because I wasn't fully clear on why this battle was happening or why I was supposed to care about this character that we barely got to know. It just felt like everything had such low stakes despite the narrative constantly trying to convince you that everything that was happening was So Important. While I found the actual action sequences to be interesting to read, ironically enough, this is where the tone shifting was at its most egregious. Constantly throughout, the book is taking itself extremely seriously, but every time someone scored some kill, we would get the most cringe inducing Marvel one-liner that entirely took me out of the action.

It wasn't all terrible though. I did find the world building to be interesting, and I certainly didn't hate this by any measure. There is an actual story here that I think could have been executed on better, but I was just really hoping it would be more interesting. I'd even consider picking up the next one if reviews are good.

I'm really hoping to read some better vampire books this year, this was not a good kick off to 2024. I suspect if you enjoy very trope-y, digestible fiction that reads like fanfic, you'll like this. That's not to shit on fanfic though, I have read a lot of fanfic much better written than this.

I was eager to read Rin Chupeco's first foray into adult fiction, this vampire novel, Silver Under Nightfall, and especially delighted to receive a review copy from the publisher via NetGalley. I hadn't been approved for their young adult titles, presumably through not being particularly young myself! I felt that Silver Under Nightfall did take a while to get going and there were a couple of moments early on where I wondered whether this novel would actually be a good fit for me, however, at about a fifth of the way through, the pace jumped up and I found myself gripped from then on. The story is as elegant and sexy as its two vampire leads, Lady Song and Lord Malekh, yet also thrilling and frequently gruesomely violent. I was surprised, actually, that I rarely recoiled from the fight scenes because I am a bit of a wuss when it comes to graphic violence, but Chupeco manages to impart detail without being gratuitous so I kept my eyes glued to the pages.

Remy is an endearing character who has been dealt a pretty shabby hand in life and who protects himself emotionally by never truly getting close to anyone. Of course, as soon as I realised this I expected that emotional wall to come crashing down before we reached the final page and Chupeco certainly didn't disappoint on that score! I loved how they portrayed the stilted conversations and mis-communications between Remy and the characters around him, especially with Xiaodan and Zidan. I could completely empathise with Remy's awkwardness as his familiar, shallow life is shattered. In fact I quite fell for Zidan myself and think he might almost have pipped Wendel (Shadows of Asphodel by Karen Kincy) for my favourite book boyfriend!

Silver Under Nightfall has an intriguing mix of city politics and personal relationships, blended with a humour that chimed strongly with my own. The compelling narrative is complemented by vividly described scenes and creatures some of which are truly horrific and others darkly bizarre yet with a certain charm. I loved the idea of demon rescue horses named Peanut and Cookie! Once I was swept up into Remy's world, I enjoyed every minute I spent there and did feel a little disappointment as the novel ended. Even though this was a longer book than I often read, I could happily have devoured another couple of hundred pages.