He was darker than those in the band Remy had just annihilated, with suggestions of kohl about the eyes, and had a strong chin covered by a five-o’clock shadow that would have hinted at a three-day drunken binge on Remy but gave the intruder the respectability of a warlord fresh from battle sitting down for a portrait to commemorate his misdeeds. Remy can’t understand why either of them wants him when no one else has ever wanted to do anything except use him for their own purposes. Upon closer scientific study (this world is steampunk-ish so there’s plenty of mad science at least of the medical variety) it’s revealed that these mindless husks were never vampires – and that vampires are immune to the infection that creates them. They are the author of Silver Under Nightfall and several speculative young adult series, including The Bone Witch, The Girl from the Well, The Never-Tilting World, and Wicked as You Wish.

Silver Under Nightfall by Rin Chupeco | Waterstones Silver Under Nightfall by Rin Chupeco | Waterstones

A stormsinger and pirate hunter join forces against a deathless pirate lord in this swashbuckling Jacobean adventure on the high-seas. Sure, most of us aren’t half-vampires who have trained long and hard in the art of vampire slaying and carry a massive sword straight out of Hellsing or Final Fantasy. That it wasn’t someone he’d known, however brief the acquaintance and however light her jasmine scent.It feels like the foundations of Remy’s world get pulled out from under him over and over as he keeps learning that under the corruption of everything if you scrape it away there’s yet another layer of, you guessed it, rot and corruption. While the blurbs reference the anime series (and videogame) Castlevania, I think that’s because of the vampires, the politics and the monsters. The noble avoided his blows, exerting the least possible energy to deflect and keep out of range, and Remy knew mockery when he saw it.

Silver Under Nightfall by Rin Chupeco | The StoryGraph Silver Under Nightfall by Rin Chupeco | The StoryGraph

With the novel, Chupeco aimed to try a spin on the topic that had not been done before by making the ghost character the sympathetic anti-heroine. But his father, who is a cantankerous old bastard at the best of times – of which he has damn few – is also in the midst of a lifelong feud with the head of the Reaper’s Guild – who also happens to be the Royal Chancellor.I understand that you had to do what was necessary to restrain my brother, even if it meant delivering him serious injury,” the lord said, the words whisper-soft and low. He knew it must have hurt like hell, because he wore at least one whetstone out on Breaker every month for easier stabbage. Desperate to clear his name and investigate newly mutated bloodsuckers, Remy sets out alone… until fate intervenes.

Silver Under Nightfall by Rin Chupeco - Goodreads Editions of Silver Under Nightfall by Rin Chupeco - Goodreads

Remy is nothing if not stubborn, and that includes refusing to admit that Xiaodan and Zidan might care about him and vice verse.He drew out Breaker from where it lay strapped across his back, the thick handle a bludgeon all on its own. The ways he fights for the underdog, pursues the truth no matter the cost and consequences – often to himself. He used its swinging, looping momentum to slice up a third across their kneecaps, then across their lungs when they dove at him from above. He countered it all the same and blocked another pair of hands right before they could shove through his back and exit his chest with a fistful of vertebrae. And he’s so, so certain that someone will take it away from him – unless he does it to himself first.