ALC Review: Immortal by Sue Lynn Tan
Release date: 7 January 2025
Rating: 3.5/5
Narrator: Natalie Naudus
Narration Rating: 4.5/5
Book Box(es) and SE’s: FairyLoot January, Waterstones SE, Deluxe First Edition
Synopsis: To win the God of War's favour was wise - to fall in love with him would ruin me.
Liyen, heir to Tianxia, has grown up knowing she must serve the immortals who once protected her and her kingdom from a vicious enemy. When she is poisoned, her grandfather steals an enchanted lotus to save her life. Enraged at his betrayal, the immortal queen commands the powerful God of War to attack Tianxia.
Upon her grandfather's death, Liyen ascends a precarious throne, vowing to end her kingdom's obligation to the immortals. When she is summoned to the Immortal Realm, she seizes the opportunity to learn their secrets and to form a tenuous alliance to safeguard her people, all with the one she should fear and mistrust the most: the ruthless God of War. As they are drawn together, a treacherous attraction ignites between them-one she has to resist, to not endanger all she is fighting for.
But with darker forces closing in around them, and her kingdom plunged into peril, Liyen must risk everything to save her people from an unspeakable fate, even if it means forging a dangerous bond with the immortal...even if it means losing her heart.
Review
Tan’s newest romantasy set in the same world as Daughter of the Moon Goddess, Immortal, really didn’t wow me. The romance didn’t ignite a spark, the writing could have used a bit of reduction, and I think this is the second story in the last week I’ve read with the same reveal at the end of it for the main character. As much as I wanted to enjoy this one, I’m afraid I spent the last third of the book struggling to stay focused on the story and not letting it turn into background noise.
Liyen spends much of her time plotting against the immortals she serves—and rightly so—because of their role in her grandfather’s death. Not long after she inherits the rule of her realm from him, she encounters danger and must be rescued by one of the very immortals who perpetrated the cause of her vengeance. The problem is, for both Liyen and the god she fights to not lose her heart to, her circumstances do not give her the space to really plot out a good revenge on anyone. She goes almost immediately from fleeing the court where her grandfather died to the war god’s palace, and the opportunity for her to really develop into a strong ruler for her people doesn’t really happen.
The shaky premise for this romance stems from a heavy reliance on forced proximity. Liyen must go to the immortal realm to pledge her allegiance to them, but she must have more time to do so in order to enact her plan of revenge. This requires her to spend extra time somewhere, and that somewhere happens to be in the war god’s house. I’m a fan of the forced proximity trope, but it can’t be the only thing that brings a couple together, so to speak. The two lovebirds must make a connection, and I don’t feel the one given in the story at all.
The God of War and his new house guest make some googly eyes at each other, but they each spend more time lying about their true purposes so many times that when they finally make a declaration of love, the betrayal really womp womps the moment. In the end, I didn’t really want them to stay together, even with the reveal factored in, simply because they had stabbed each other in the back too many times to really give an impression of sincerity. The relationship did not give off healthy, romantic vibes.
Though I enjoyed Naudus’ narration, I think Liyen’s story could have benefitted from a different narrator to differentiate her story from Xingyin’s of Daughter of the Moon Goddess and the myriad characters of the short story collection Tan released last February. Though, Naudus is one of the few narrators who does both male and female character voices well and with great distinction among all of them, so it wasn’t too bad.
Overall, 3.5 stars for the story and 4.5 for the narration. I didn’t really feel the romance in this one; the characters kept doing the same terrible things to one another, making not only the relationship feel like a toxic war zone but the plot terribly repetitive as well.
My thanks to HarperAudio and LibroFM for the ALC, for which I willingly give my own, honest opinion.
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