After witnessing her sister get abducted by a vampire, Kidan can no longer hide from the shadowy world her family tried so hard to protect her from. Kidan is welcomed back to the secret society of humans and vampire companions, if only as a means to find her sister. But the information she needs comes at a price, Kidan must graduate from Uxlay University and find a way to master House Adane in order to be recognized as the true Adane heir. The only issue is, the last surviving Adane vampire, Susenyos, is a violent bastard dead set on becoming the heir instead. Kidan will enter a deadly game and reveal the darkest parts of herself if it means she can save her sister from the world of vampires she hates.
I have many, many gripes with this story. But before I discuss the messy parts, I did want to highlight the strongest, most interesting part of Immortal Dark, and that was the adversarial relationship between Kidan and Susenyos. Kidan’s single-minded, rage-filled focus leads to some absolutely insane actions, and she’s more than met her match with the violence-inclined vampire living in Adane House. These two both think and operate from a place of extremes and are both at the receiving end of each other’s insane intentions. Their hatred for each other is like an inferno, so hot, blinding, and surprising in the amount of destruction it causes. Ultimately, I think their relationship to one another is a little shallow and lacking in many ways, but it was fascinating to see the pain and damage inflicted as a result of their interactions. Kidan feels more like an avatar of violence than a victim with no agency, but is that a good thing?
Okay, now I have to tell you that the world-building in this story is a mess. The most important part of Immortal Dark is that Kidan has to attend the university and pass the classes so she can rightfully claim Adane House as the heir. Yet, the university elements are sporadic, nonsensical, and do nothing to help Kidan or the reader learn about the world and the role humans and vampires have in it. Kidan is enrolled in two classes, but only one is ever discussed. Then, the one class and assignments only make an appearance to serve as plot devices that push Kidan and her friends into action. And even worse, the random assignments they do discuss for the class are haughty, illogical conversations philosophizing about the human and vampire relationship. The second most important part of Kidan’s story is that she must also master Adane House and claim it so she can change the House’s law. I’d love to tell you about the magical house, but after 450+ pages, I have not a shred of knowledge to share. Kidan is supposed to be mastering every room of the house to claim it, but the book never shows her doing more than crying in the hallway. Sometimes she gets assailed by visions and sits in the observatory for hours trying not to kill Susenyos, but only as a rare treat. The House is just a glorified setting to respond at random to Kidan and Susenyous’ never-ending battle.
Ultimately, this story is just a playground for Kidan’s anger. Immortal Dark can’t seem to lay a foundation when it comes to building the world or establishing the magic system, but it’s really good at giving Kidan things to rail against. The entire story feels like it was created to incite her anger and fuel her rage against the world she knows nothing about and the sister that she can’t find. I realized this the more I thought about the unimportant school assignments and the magical house’s random activity. None of these instances were used to help us understand the characters or the world, but they always incited Kidan to do something extremely reckless and create even more violence and death to make the book seem dark and macabre.
And on that note, Immortal Dark loves to think it’s so dark, violent, and brutal. But its inability to bestow consequences on Kidan and her actions snuffs out all that big, scary game it talks. Rules are given at the beginning of the story, ones that apply to all the major houses, the students attending school, and even rules for the vampires themselves. However, it doesn’t take long to realize that none of these rules matter, because Kidan breaks them left and right without anything coming back to bite her. Since Kidan can do whatever she wants without fear of getting kicked out of school or getting arrested for violent crimes, the tension is completely sucked out of the story. All the sacrifices Kidan makes to get her sister back, all the stakes in the story, lose their weight because we know Kidan won’t really suffer for it anyway. Once this realization hits, Immortal Dark became a story of students and vampires trying to out-edge lord one another to see who can be the most monstrous before they meet to discuss a school assignment at the cafe.
If you’re looking for some truly tense and hateful character dynamics, then you may find Kidan and Susenyos’ interactions compelling enough to carry you through this story. But if you’re wanting context to help understand their dynamic and the world they’re operating in, I fear you’ll be as disappointed as I am.
Rating: Immortal Dark – 4.5/10
-Brandee
