Immortal by
Sue Lynn Tan
My rating:
3 of 5 stars
Firstly, I'd like to thank this book for being a standalone fantasy. They are so rare these days and it's nice to just have the whole story.
The world building in this one was a bit confusing to me, there are a lot of trite messages and the romance is drilled in hard.
Aside from that, I didn't totally hate the characters and there were some interesting moments, so I still enjoyed the read.
Liyen tells the story, and it mostly revolves around her insta-love with the mighty immortal, the God of War. But she's also just become ruler of the moral kingdom of Tianxia, so her duty is to her people first.
There's a clear line between mortal and immortal, and allegedly there's a wall around the city of Tianxia and all in it serve the immortal queen. I found it hard to wrap my head around what this city was actually like, what was outside the wall, why the wall was necessary, etc. Also how big this wall was, and what the contents within were. Plus there's the immortal kingdom - in the sky - and then a Netherworld which seems to actually just be next door? So the scope of this world was very confusing to me. Admittedly, I was kind of bored by the world so that might also be on me for not paying attention.
There are politics at play, but I still didn't fully grasp it. There's mention of other immortal realms, and an Emperor, but the queen seems like the big boss here. I didn't properly understand the hierarchy, nor why there seemed to be only the queen and the God of War that were important? Like, where are all the other important gods please?
So yeah, the world was a bit of a mess to me.
It seems like that was perhaps a consequence of focusing so much on the romance - we get so many declarations of love it gets a little tiresome. He will do anything for her - WE GET IT. So the romance was a bit too full on for me. That said, I was extremely grateful we skipped the explicit sex scenes. Allusions to the deed suit me fine.
The action was decent enough to keep me interested, with plenty of fight scenes and winged devils to mix things up. There's the obligatory training montage, too.
There's also just so much of Liyen being noble to the point of me rolling my eyes. She's called out for judging before knowing, but then calls herself out on it repeatedly going forward, then calls everyone else on it. She's all about equality and giving everyone a fair go - not everyone is evil, not even the evil people. It's a beautiful message for the real world, but in a fantasy novel it makes everything kinda boring. How high can the stakes really be if there's no real evil force to challenge things? So it was a bit mediocre because of that.
As mentioned, there was enough to mostly hold my interest but it was also kind of forgettable. It's a happy lil fantasy romance for those who are into that kind of thing, but there's no spice in any department really.
This was my first by this author, and while I can see the merit of her writing, it wasn't really for me. But fans of fantasy romance should enjoy the love in this one.
With thanks to Harper Collins for an ARC
View all my reviews