Violet Reviews things: Archive

To The Death

**Trigger warning for suicide talk**

Author: illusivecrafticorn

Genre: Vampire

What I liked about this book:

This book is fucking hysterical.

It's really well-researched, too. The premise is clever: 5000 year old vampire is trying to off himself. It isn't going well.

It would probably go better if Eli didn't pick the most complicated, inane ways in which to end his existence. First he tries getting the Roman army to do it. When that doesn't work, he gets himself caught as a traitor and 'executed' via molten gold. Which only results in him coughing up gold nuggets for a few centuries, which leads to people following him around because they think he's the messiah.

So then of course he literally copies Jesus and tries to get himself crucified.

Yes, you did read that correctly. Spoiler alert! It doesn't work. So what does he do instead? Pretends to be Jewish in 1500s Spain.

Predictably, that doesn't work either, but the author takes us through a tour of some really cool and fairly obscure historic events. The Henrietta Marie was Eli's doing. He gets keelhauled. Murders some peasants. All the while some other dude has to clean up his mess, and it's clear through their telepathic communications that the rest of the vampire community feels that Eli is kind of an idiot.

This book was waaaaay more entertaining than it had any right to be, and the research poured into it shows. Either the author is really into history or they worked really hard. Possibly both. It came out as a sort of fucked-up Forrest Gump, and I love it.

What I did NOT like about this book:

For all the wonderful humor and great history, I would like for this book to be way more immersive. Take us through one of these scenes instead of just glossing over it. Show us how Eli feels, other than just kind of put-upon. Give us more interaction with the other vampires. I think this book would be well-suited being much, much longer than it currently is because it would allow the events room to stretch and breathe.

Some of the later chapters are much better written than the earlier ones.

This idea is clever. Let it breathe. Give it room to grow and stop strangling it by limiting each historic event to only one chapter.

I think this could be really strong if written just a tiny bit better.

Overall:

This isn't the best thing I've ever read but I liked it a lot.

Rating:

Like a 6/10. Writing needs improvement but the idea was really funny and I enjoyed reading it.