Hi friends!
Today I’m thrilled to be bringing to you the review for a stunning fantasy dark academia debut, courtesy of TBR Beyond Tours.
Check out other cool posts from the tour here!
ARC provided by NetGalley and the publisher. All opinions are my own.
DESCRIPTION
The Cruel Prince meets Ninth House in this dangerously romantic dark academia fantasy, where a lost heiress must infiltrate an arcane society and live with the vampire she suspects killed her family and kidnapped her sister.
It began long before my time, but something has always hunted our family.
Orphaned heiress Kidan Adane grew up far from the arcane society she was born into, where human bloodlines gain power through vampire companionship. When her sister, June, disappears, Kidan is convinced a vampire stole her—the very vampire bound to their family, the cruel yet captivating Susenyos Sagad.
To find June, Kidan must infiltrate the elite Uxlay University—where students study to ensure peaceful coexistence between humans and vampires and inherit their family legacies. Kidan must survive living with Susenyos—even as he does everything he can to drive her away. It doesn’t matter that Susenyos’s wickedness speaks to Kidan’s own violent nature and tempts her to surrender to a life of darkness. She must find her sister and kill Susenyos at all costs.
When a murder mirroring June’s disappearance shakes Uxlay, Kidan sinks further into the ruthless underworld of vampires, risking her very soul. There she discovers a centuries-old threat—and June could be at the center of it. To save her sister, Kidan must bring Uxlay to its knees and either break free from the horrors of her own actions or embrace the dark entanglements of love—and the blood it requires.
My Review
Immortal Dark is a deliciously dark, morbid and bloody beginning to a fantasy series that will keep you hooked.
This book gave me the extremely validating feeling of finding a needle in a haystack; Immortal Dark is a true enemies-to-lovers.
Kidan Adane is an unlikeable character. Her moral compass goes nuts the moment her sister goes missing. She has no lines she wouldn’t cross to get her sister back, and her desperation to be reunited with her feels truly genuine.
Getting her sister back is Kidan’s justification for everything she does, so her relationship with her sister has to feel co-dependent and deep as the crimes she commits in her name. It won’t feel believable otherwise.
Susenyos’ character was… a lot. He’s a vampire who’s 500 years old, and has more secrets up his sleeve than I can keep count of. If you are a fan of characters from Serpent and the Wings of Night by Carissa Broadbent or The Beautiful by Renée Ahdieh, then you will find that the relationship between Kidan and Susenyos is a more vicious version of those.
The world-building around the vampires and the laws built around them also felt extremely unique and different than anything I had ever seen done with vampires before. The magic system is well-established, and the “house rules” system is a great example of that.
Most of all, I love stories where the houses seem to be characters on their own. The way they are written, they come alive not just in our imagination but in the story. Adane House is close to a sentient being with its own powerful magic.
The book also highlighted the uncomfortable feeling of being separated from your culture, roots and language, and how alienating it can be. Kidan was forced to stop using her native language, and was kept away from any knowledge of her ancestral history.
It’s moral questioning is almost reminiscent of The Secret History- the way its characters a re driven to murder and then fall into tragic regret afterwards.
Another that is a recurring feature of dark academia books is a the friend group, which Immortal Dark also delivers on.
The friends are crabs trapped in a bucket, dragging each other down when someone tries to leave, and they incite each other to murder like a bunch of high-schoolers peer pressurising each other to smoke cigarettes. It was more entertaining than I ever imagined.
Overall, I had a great time with this book, and I highly recommend it if any of those things sounds interesting to you.
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