#eotdawn

How it's going:

I FUCKING HATE YOU

edit: false alarm, unfuck you jay or something

First and foremost, this is very different to my usual content and the audience for it is entirely different and very small, but it’s been bouncing around in my brain so I needed to post it!!

Secondly, a disclaimer; this will, of course, contain spoilers for the entire trilogy. But also— let it be known I think Jay Kristoff is a cunt and I do not like nor support the man, and I never intend to read another book of his again. Cool? Cool. Let’s begin!

SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT !!

Wow, this was…. a journey! EOTV completely rewired my brain from day one, and I just gotta say that I absolutely devoured the three books as soon and as quickly as I physically could! I enjoyed them A LOT, far more than I thought I would since I normally don’t care about vampire stuff all that much!

Now, I hate book star ratings, but for the sake of simplicity I would give this book five stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️…. And it is the most disappointing five star book I’ve ever read too.

Like stated above; I loved the book, it pulled me in, I was never bored at any point, I loved a lot of the characters, I thought the story was compelling enough. But none of that prevents me from seeing the flaws, and the only reason it gets such a high rating from me is based solely on my personal enjoyment during the experience. So, let’s break it all down :)

I definitely liked the worldbuilding. Vampire stories are not usually my cup of tea so I had never seen a vampire story where religion is such a vital and big part of how the story is told, it was new for me and I thought it was very innovative in that sense. However— the worldbuilding is very very lacking. It’s shallow, surface level. I wouldn’t actually call this a bad thing, because at the end of the day it is consistent enough to support the narrative and take the story where it wants to go, but it definitely doesn’t feel as if the religious worldbuilding goes any deeper than for a certain aesthetic and convenient plot points. I will also point here that… the entire daysdeath plot, combined with the Esana’s end of the world thing… they were explained very little to the point that in the end, it’s still not wholly clear to me how daysdeath works and how killing the priori fixes it in any way beyond them sort of being the fuel to keep it going. This brings me to—

The unreliable narration was, I think, what keeps this story afloat. It was a very good thing to have Gabriel and Celene narrate the vast majority of the story, because all the shallow worldbuilding and inconsistencies can hide behind this unreliable narration and thus allows for a lot of loose ends to remain where in any other traditionally narrated book this would be a rather disappointing end. That said, the ending did lack the strong punch that the rest of the story had, precisely because of this unreliable narration being revealed to Jean-François. That final battle and moment was built up on and hyped so much that in the end it just felt like… “oh, that’s the end? Already?”. It was unsatisfactory as far as emotions go, it did not give me the high that the first two books and most of book three gave me. Additionally, it just was a very convenient way to pull a lot of “but it actually turns out Gabriel is super smart and super clever and he knew the truth from the beginning!” moments.

This has to be said (again, because I’m far from the first to say it): Jay Kristoff cannot write women to save his fucking life and most of the female characters were either shallow, annoying as fuck, or stilted. Dior and Celene were the best written characters, I think nearly on par with the male characters in the book, but everyone else was so bland and repetitive; the women in this series serve to either be eye candy, murderous and evil (but still eye candy), or obstacles (eye candy status can or cannot be present). It’s very clear to me that Jay Kristoff’s misogyny is all over these books, because he doesn’t write women as people (and we’re not even going to go well into the whole objectification because we’d be here all day otherwise). The only reason Dior and Celene are as compelling as they are is because they don’t act like the women he writes, and are more masculine coded; Dior being a lesbian and a streetchild gives her that tomboyish energy that has her continuously relate to the men in the story, and Celene is not a woman, she’s a Liathe of the Esana, she’s not written as a human person which is why she has more depth. Charlotte’s character was so maddening to me because I really liked her, but she makes little fucking sense. When they meet her she is harsh and willing to kill Gabriel & Co. in a heartbeat if she must, and her subsequent softening towards them isn’t justified enough in the text because she’s a background character that only appears when she’s relevant. This also brings me to:

I hate Phoebe and the romance subplot with Gabriel was completely unnecessary. Phoebe was the one thing I disliked from EOTD, and I was SO glad that she barely featured in EOTDawn, because I cannot stand her. She didn’t serve any narrative purpose beyond her connection to the Highlands which was relevant for Dior’s arc, and to seduce Gabriel so she could steal Ashdrinker for Maryn. You could have replaced her with literally any other duskdancer and nothing would have changed significantly. Except Maryn would need another tactic to steal Ashdrinker. Now— Why do I think Phoebe sucks and she shouldn’t have been a love interest? Gabriel’s grief and trauma over losing Astrid and Patience was a MAJOR part of his character, the driving force for him to even get on this quest to slay Fabién, and for him to bond with Dior and learn to love her as a daughter. And I just absolutely despised the way Phoebe essentially assaulted him when he was in a very vulnerable and semi delirious state (he was actively hallucinating his wife’s presence ffs), then got mad when he got mad that she had done that, and threw it in his face that he essentially should be over Astrid and Patience’s deaths already (or at the very least should move on). And like… What. What the fuck. Listen, Gabriel is a dick and he’s not an innocent little lamb by any means, but I just couldn’t like Phoebe after that. Gabriel was struggling very hard with even accepting that they had died, he was lying to everyone about them being alive and he was constantly seeing Astrid everywhere because he wanted to die and be with them but couldn’t because he had to avenge them first! And then the next second… because Phoebe is hot… he is over it. (Of course not like, totally over it, but with the way Astrid and Patience were haunting the narrative so beautifully, this was a jarring /neg twist. After this, only Patience haunts the narrative as strongly and I hated that).

Romance subplot part two; It’s clear that the objective with Phoebe was to replace Astrid. Gabriel ends the series with a new lover and a new daughter, and that was never necessary because his story with Dior and how they bonded and became father and daughter WAS enough. Their relationship started his healing process and Dior’s status as a new daughter was never framed as replacing Patience because she isn’t doing that, and Gabriel’s character growth and him coming more and more out of his grief was justified enough through her. There was absolutely no reason for the romance to exist, and I would go as far as to say that it was detrimental to Gabriel’s character to a point; he gave up everything he had and spat on the face of the order for Astrid, she was literally his whole world and a huge part of him (which, she is also unfortunately written shallowly, but since she is dead this is less evident), and if there was to be any romance in the works for Gabriel’s life later, it definitely was not at that time. I get why it was a thing, but it wasn’t necessary. And I also know it’s stated Astrid and Patience are still a part of him, but yeah, it was just a huge disappointment to have the ending be that. Nobody can ever make me like Phoebe.

Back to the writing of women characters; their shallowness and lack of depth becomes all the more evident when there’s some decent (not amazing, but decent) writing in the male characters. The relationships between male characters, how they talk to each other and how they interact, it was actually nice and even tender at parts (surprising given the edgy tone of the book). I liked it because uh… I’m a guy so I naturally relate to male characters more, but it disappointed me because seeing the decent writing in them, it just further proved how terrible most women were in the books and that made me genuinely sad.

There is so much more I could say if I continued to think about it but we shall leave it at that because this post is already long enough 😭😭😭

So.

I liked the books. I loved Gabriel, I really loved his bond with Aaron (peak bromance if I do say so myself), I loved most of his relationships with other characters (Phoebe never counts). I loved that he’s a raging bisexual and far too stupid to realise that. I liked Dior, their found father-daughter dynamic, I liked how Dior grew from being a prickly and defensive child into slowly having more confidence and learning to trust others. I really loved some of the villains— Fabién Voss was INCREDIBLE, I loved Nikita so godddamn much (I hate him, but I loved him, y’know). Jean-François??? *chef’s kiss*.

I had such a fun time, I really enjoyed the story, I think it is good and if someone asks me I’d recommend giving it a try, genuinely. The overdramatic cringy narration works so well because it’s an overdramatic story about overdramatic vampires, it has its fair share of smut if people are into that -though I myself skipped those scenes-, and the French thing was so random but it somehow worked well enough.

I liked it, and I think it’s not that great of a book, and that Jay Kristoff is not a good writer.

I loved it, and that is why I am all the more disappointed with the end result, because it could have been so much better.

Jay Kristoff's M:tG x EotV crossover deck

(as of 13.05.2025)

I've only found one mention of the Angel of Pain, and it included just their title, no name or gender, or anything 🥲

for the life of me I couldn't find anything on the seventh martyr. if I do during future re-reads, I'll update the post

I guess you could also add Dior to the list, since she's called San Dior by the people

EDIT (21.06.2026): GOT HIS ASS