Interview With The Vampire Fans Have To Read This Dark Fantasy Book Trilogy
by Devin Meenan · /FilmWe may receive a commission on purchases made from links.
"Interview with the Vampire," now retitled "The Vampire Lestat," has returned on AMC, offering fans another bite. Anne Rice's original "Vampire Chronicles" series is 13 books long, and "Interview"/"Lestat" showrunner Rolin Jones said in 2022 that AMC intends to adapt all of them (via Syfy).
But if 13 books still aren't enough of Rice's sexy bloodsuckers for you, you've got vampire book options aplenty. There's George R. R. Martin's "Fevre Dream," set on a Mississippi steamboat in the 1850s that might remind of the New Orleans-set chapters of "Interview." Martin wants Guillermo del Toro to make "Fevre Dream" into a movie, but don't hold your breath to read it.
One of the best recent vampire books is Jay Kristoff's dark fantasy trilogy, "Empire of the Vampire," which wrapped in 2025 with the finale "Empire of the Dawn." Kristoff's previous fantasy trilogy, "Nevernight," was set in a fantastical version of the Roman Empire where the sun never set. For his "Vampire" trilogy, he flipped that exactly. In the country Elidaen, after "Daysdeath," it is always night. Without the sun to hold vampires back, they've shifted from predators to conquerors.
Kristoff's lead is famed vampire hunter Gabriel de Leon, a "Paleblood" or dhampir (the son of a human mother and vampire father). He's a hero whose feats are worthy of his leonine name, part of the "Silversaint" holy order... but when the books begin, he's already lost. His order and friends are all exterminated, and he sits locked in the dungeon of vampire empress Margot Chastain. One of her servants, Jean-François, ask Gabriel to recount his life story before it ends in execution.
Anne Rice defined modern vampire literature, and Kristoff nicks her first book's framing device of a (half) vampire and an interviewer.
Empire of the Vampire is a delicious dark fantasy blend
In most vampire stories, the ghouls are outsiders or shadows threatening a human civilization. Take "Dracula," where the Count lives alone in the Carpathian mountains and then invades London with his evil.
In Jay Kristoff's "Empire" series, this is flipped. Vampires rule kingdoms and lead armies, and humanity is on the backfoot. The second book "Empire of the Damned" takes us inside a vampire stronghold, ruled by siblings Nikita and Lilidh Dyvok (devilish ram horns sprout from her blood-red hair). The descriptions of slaughterhouses for human chattel inside will make your blood run so icy cold not even a vampire's bite could make it flow.
Different vampire stories have unique rules for the monsters, and "Empire" is no exception. The are four vampire "bloodlines," each one with different qualities: the animal-controlling Chastain, the super-strong Dyvok, the emotion-manipulating Ilon, and the iron-skinned, mind-controlling Voss.
If there's one word to describe Kristoff's prose, it's lascivious, and not only because of the plentiful sex scenes. The flowery language and jaw dropping plot twists are so perversely delicious that it's easy to burn through the "Empire" books even though all three span about 700 pages.
Kristoff isn't alone in depicting Elidaen; while not even close to being graphic novels, there's about two dozen illustration per book. If you're more of a visual person, these offer firm images of the characters and the monsters they face. Artist Bon Orthwick drew for the first two books, but Gonzalo Mendiverry took over for "Empire of the Dawn," and the art style moved from storybook and stained glass-like to photorealism. Compare below:
Empire of the Vampire also feels like a fantasy version of The Last of Us
"Dracula" may have created the archetype of vampires as English or Eastern European, but Elidaen is more like a dark fantasy spin on medieval France. (One wonders if this was Jay Kristoff's hat tipping to the most famous French vampire, Lestat de Lioncourt.)
French words and phrases often manifest in dialogue, and the nation's religion is Catholicism mixed with vampire mythology. Gabriel and Silversaints like him subsist their vampire urges by smoking a powder made from blood, a substance explicitly called "Sanctum" and "Sacrament." Remember, one of the key sacraments for Catholics is drinking wine transmuted to blood.
That leads into the series' other lead; Dior, a white-haired youth whose blood can heal. In a twist right out of "The Da Vinci Code," Dior is believed to be a descendant of the messiah, and the key to ending Daysdeath. As Gabriel and Dior grow closer, "Empire of the Vampire" reveals it's also a dark fantasy take on "The Last of Us" — an old warrior who lost his family, now willing to damn the world to save his adopted child. A brutal swordsman traveling with a little girl in monster-infested land will also invoke everything from "Berserk" to Christopher Buehlman's Black plague horror novel "Between Two Fires."
Remember, though, this is Gabriel spinning this story to entertain his captors. That brings it back to "Interview with the Vampire," a series about the subjectivity of experience — memories shift, especially when you live centuries. Without getting into specific spoilers, the ending invites you to reread with new knowledge gained, and it made me reconsider Kristoff's claim that "he does not believe in happy endings." Perhaps the real world can't offer happy endings, but the stories we tell can.