As for mixing vampires with medieval fantasy, it is something that hasn’t been done much, he says, alluding to the tendency to make vampires contemporaries of the moment the stories are being written. Furthermore, Barlow, the vampire from King’s novel, was a model for Kristoff’s vampire Fabien Voss. In fact, there is a scene in Empire of the Vampire that is a homage to a moment in the novel in which the vampire snatches the crucifix – useless without faith behind it – from Father Callahan. He declares himself a fan of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot – 35 years after having read it for the first time, there are passages that he still can’t forget.
Of course, he says, he has been influenced by many more works after all, he grew up reading vampire books. Also, Interview with the Vampire, by Anne Rice, The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss, and Blood Song, by Anthony Ryan.
Numerous influences can be found in Kristoff’s novel, such as that of the Geralt of Rivia saga by Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski (which was turned into the series The Witcher). Characters in Taika Waititi's film 'What we do in the Shadows'. Kristoff impresses with his intimidating Cimmerian look: 6′7″ tall, arms full of tattoos, long raven hair and a Lankhmar swordsman beard add to that a black Bad Omen t-shirt and you’ll have the picture of the guy you’d want by your side with a crossbow during a wild night of slaying creatures at the Titty Twister bar from From Dusk Till Dawn.Įmpire of the Vampire is presented as the long interrogation of a captured veteran vampire hunter – the feared chevalier Gabriel, a member of a powerful order of warrior monks known as the Silversaints – by a vampire who is a high-ranking “coldblood” that acts as the vampire empress’s chronicler. The book, already an international success, has created enormous expectation within the vampire fandom, and the truth is that, once the suspicions that a work of Proustian proportions such as this can arouse have been overcome (as well the teen lit design and art of the book), it is quite good.
And, indeed, Bram Stoker’s novel was but the beginning of an extraordinary bloodstream of vampire stories that has now led to renowned Australian fantasy writer Jay Kristoff, author of The Nevernight Chronicle, who has brought a new twist to the world of the blood-sucking undead with Empire of the Vampire, a voluminous 752-page novel that is also the first installment of a trilogy and which skillfully and excitingly combines an epic-medieval fantasy scenario with the vampire myth. Abraham Van Helsing upon seeing the unfortunate Lucy Westenra, Dracula’s victim, expire (for the first time). Australian writer Jay Kristoff, pictured at the Gigamesh bookstore in Barcelona.
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