The Immortal

Rating: 1.5 stars

DNF (Did Not Finish) - 48%

During high school, I was a big fan of Gena Showalter's Intertwined YA series. So, naturally I thought I would enjoy reading one of her most recent works, The Immortal. This was my first time reading an adult fantasy novel written by her and I was super excited to delve into this new fictional world after reading the premise (especially since I haven't read anything by her in a while). The opening of the story features a flashback told from a young Halo's perspective, which did an amazing job of drawing me into the story. However, I became heavily disappointed about one hundred and sixty pages into the book following Halo and Ophelia's meeting.

Not only was the writing style sloppy (there were many instances where the spelling of "harpynymph" became "harpymph"), but most of the main characters (especially Ophelia) were ridiculously immature for an adult novel; there was one scene where the other harpy characters collectively shout for Halo and Ophelia to "bone". I simply couldn't connect with the protagonist or take her seriously most of the time; she was very whiny, often indecisive about what she wanted, and complained a lot about wanting power/respect while continuously becoming a pawn of the bad guy. The only character that I kind of liked was Halo and that was because a little more time was spent giving his character emotional depth compared to Ophelia's. I also found the world building to be overly complicated in The Immortal; it was confusing trying to understand what was going on half the time and I found myself having trouble remembering who everyone was/who they're affiliated with.

The banter between Ophelia and Halo was more often forced than it was fun. The insta-lust that occurred between their characters was also extremely cringe at times; for example, Ophelia hornily rubbed against Halo in front of everyone at one point and the dialogue in the steamy scenes were embarrassingly literal. The bad guy of the story, Erebus the Deathless, was similarly shallow; he was the typical cliche paper villain. There was barely any background given about this god (let alone the opposing god Chaos) and he only ever showed up in the story to inflict pain upon the protagonist after giving not so cryptic remarks that always unsurprisingly came to pass. I found this repetitious cycle to be boring as well as the whole feud itself. There was just no emotional depth to anything that happened; things just happened and nothing held extreme weight. The high stakes of the battles were swept aside as soon as the reset button was hit, which made everything feel predictable and took a lot of the fire out of the parts of the story that should've been exciting.

It's possible that going into this story without having read the first book might have contributed to my disconnect with this fictional world. However, I honestly still don't believe I would've like this book even if I had read its predecessor. Overall, I think the concept of the story had potential. But, unfortunately, it was poorly executed. I strongly regret purchasing the overpriced ebook for such low-quality storytelling.