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(1.5)

despite being one of the least compelling books i’ve ever read, immortal still stands out in the sense that it perfectly represents almost everything i hate in romantic fantasy. with its cast of underdeveloped characters and its unbelievably shallow romance, getting through this was an experience that had me questioning why i even bother to read at all.

i don’t even know where to begin with my complaints, so i’ll try to keep most of them short. to start, the setting of this book, though tied to the setting of the author’s celestial kingdom series, is nowhere near as vivid. instead, it just feels like a very typical fantasy cdrama setting. the plot is pretty messy overall and full of predictable twists, which aren’t helped by the frequently melodramatic writing, and the side characters are extremely one-dimensional.

still, all of this would be fine if i ended up being invested in the main characters and their romance. i wasn’t. liyen and zhangwei are two of the most insufferable characters i’ve ever read about and a textbook example of a horribly written fantasy couple. while they’re initially supposed to be enemies, or at least reluctant allies, it’s obvious by the time you’re 25% through that they desperately want to make out despite 1) barely knowing each other, 2) having no chemistry, and 3) zhangwei being fantasy man with no personality aside from being cold and closed off #50,000,000,000. just once, i’m begging romantic fantasy authors to write an enemies to lovers relationship where both characters genuinely completely hate each other for more than ten seconds.

which brings me to my next point: i despise liyen. she has to be one of the most annoying narrators to ever exist, mainly because she’s absolutely spineless when it comes to zhangwei. though he’s nothing but rude to her for a good chunk of the book and she’s constantly telling the reader that she’ll never trust him or feel anything for him ever again, she still ends up all flushed and flustered every time zhangwei bothers to look in her direction or (god forbid) show her some basic respect. this cycle of “i know i’m supposed to hate his guts but he was nice to me for half a second so now i’m conflicted again� repeats so many times that reading about it is nothing short of pure torture.

also, even aside from her relationship with zhangwei, liyen just isn’t a good character. the author presents her as an ambitious ruler who’ll do whatever it takes to save her people, when in reality, she’s reckless, childish, and borderline stupid. she has virtually no common sense, let alone the cunning you’d expect from someone responsible for an entire kingdom, so nearly every success of hers only happens because the solution is handed to her on a silver platter. and (surprise) zhangwei is also the worst! he’s the exact type of brooding, extremely powerful (and boring) love interest that’s already been seen a trillion times before, and i rolled my eyes every time he showed up.

it’s definitely not unclear that i absolutely hated this (though i’ll admit that i did like chengyin and really appreciated that he didn’t end up falling in love with liyen, since the last thing this book needs is a half-baked love triangle). i still might read more of sue lynn tan’s books in the future, since i thought daughter of the moon goddess was okay, but i wouldn’t recommend this to anyone who wants their next read to be even the tiniest bit interesting.

thanks to netgalley and the publisher for providing this arc.

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pre-review:

it’s basically like if the most boring cdrama you’ve ever seen had a baby with everything that’s wrong with romantic fantasy as a genre

anyway FUCK liyen and FUCK zhangwei!! you both should’ve died idgaf rtc after i recover from my worst book of the year.