YMMV / The Unquiet Grave

• Awesome Moments: John Blake's power is such that he's able to redirect a plane of the City of Never and placate a powerful City-beast, as he demonstrates in the climax, smashing Ruthven to pieces in the process.
• Complete Monster: Lord Silas Ruthven is the uncle of Carmilla Karnstein and a wicked, vampiric sorcerer who once studied by the side of Eliphas Coyte. Ruthven has empowered himself off the cruel death of thousands throughout the ages, with a special predilection for destroying everything his victims value to make them utterly his. Ruthven even repeats this to put Carmilla under his heel, forcibly turning her into a vampire and making her kill innocent people, even starving her until she turns on the ones she loves. A former worshipper of the Scarlet Saint-—an embodiment of Hardestadt Delac—Ruthven orchestrates the grisly Jack the Ripper murders to distract from his own feedings, while also harnessing the power of a City-beast named the Nocturne to enthrall more innocents to their doom. Ultimately seeking not to become a god but to create his own, Ruthven attempts to use a dark ritual to twist all of London's population into a writhing, agonized web of flesh through which he'll channel the energy to forcibly twist Hardestadt into the Scarlet Saint. Through the Saint, Ruthven intends on nothing less than to plunge the world into a hellscape reveling in violence and terror.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Mircalla von Karnstein, better known as Carmilla, is the jovial, cultured vampire niece of Silas Ruthven, and though appearing to be completely under his control, Carmilla is revealed to be far more sly than first appearances imply. Abused and mistreated by Ruthven for years, Carmilla grows in independence and cunning, and concocts a scheme to take down her uncle for good. Carmilla locates and lures the powerful couple of Hardestadt Delac and Eliza Cortly to London, leaving them a bread trail of clues and pointers on Ruthven's evil schemes, all while seducing Hardestadt's daughter Grete. Even when her manipulations are exposed, Carmilla continues to trick Hardestadt and Eliza into dancing to her tune, ultimately using them as pawns to arrange Ruthven's death and save London at the cost of her own life before spending her final moments of life revealing that she has truly fallen in love with Grete, and wishes her the best in life while apologizing for how she used the girl's family.
  • Priest Akhenaten, cursed to become a mummy after he tampered with the forces of death in an attempt to resurrect a loved one, maintains a polite, respectful attitude towards all even in his undead state. Forced to feed on the life force of others to sustain his own, Akhenaten solely targets those he believes are deserving of death for their immoral ways, having a deep respect and care for anyone innocent in the world, even going out of his way to save the life of a child bystander during an intense fight. Though seeming to loyally serve Silas Ruthven in his plan to destroy London, Akhenaten truthfully allies with the brilliant Carmilla, scheming alongside her to thwart her uncle's mad plan at the cost of their own lives, a plan that goes off without a hitch. Powerful enough to trade both physical and verbal blows with Eliza Cortly and noble enough to earn the respect of Hardestadt Delac, Akhenaten successfully orchestrates the breaking of his mummy curse, even as he expressed a willingness to be damned for eternity if it resulted in the saving of lives.
• Nightmare Fuel: Silas Ruthven's master plan. Ruthven takes Body Horror to new and uncharted levels in the series, as his final plan is to merge all of London's populace into a web of flesh to generate enough agony to turn Hardestadt into his slave god.
• Tear Jerker:
  • The death of Mary Jane Kelly, one of the victims of Jack the Ripper, is a potent aversion of Disposable Sex Worker trope. Eliza befriends Mary and gets to know her as a person, salting the wound of her horrific slaughter.
  • Carmilla's end is a Foregone Conclusion, but her final scene as she fades to ash in Grete's arms in the sunset hurts regardless.

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