Name: Immortal Dark
Rating: 4.113636363636363 (11 reviews)
ISBN: 9780316570381

Tigest Girma

Nineteen-year-old orphan Kidan Adane, heiress to a fallen House of humans tethered to vampiric creatures called draniacs, navigates her duty to foster human-draniac relations, but when her sister is kidnapped, Kidan suspects a draniac and will do anything to find her.

Immortal Dark

yaya

"I love the shape of your mouth when you beg." 

Roman

Steph

If you enjoyed Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo, you'll likely appreciate this one too! It has the same dark academia vibes and is heavy on the mystery, but this time with vampires instead of ghosts. However, I did find the main character incredibly annoying. She jumps to conclusions and is so determined to prove herself right that she can't stay objective. Despite my frustrations with her, I'm still invested in the plot, so I'll probably read the second book. Thank you, Libro.fm, for the ALC copy!

Surprised me at every turn. So unexpected. So juicy. So surreal. 

Monserrat Navarro 

wow. this was genuinely so good. i'm not usually one for vampires, i tend to stick with faeries and wizards, but i lovedddd this book so much. while it was pretty slow in the beginning, i didn't find myself bored or wishing for something to happen, like i usually do. the pacing was great and really worked well with the plot. 

i loved getting to be inside of kiden's mind, to see how her longing to find her sister and her want to save her friends changed her, for better or worse. seeing her develop a taste for life, a fearful longing to live and survive and thrive. all of it was amazing. the writing was very beautiful, as well. 

kaii

wow. this was genuinely so good. i'm not usually one for vampires, i tend to stick with faeries and wizards, but i lovedddd this book so much. while it was pretty slow in the beginning, i didn't find myself bored or wishing for something to happen, like i usually do. the pacing was great and really worked well with the plot. 

i loved getting to be inside of kiden's mind, to see how her longing to find her sister and her want to save her friends changed her, for better or worse. seeing her develop a taste for life, a fearful longing to live and survive and thrive. all of it was amazing. the writing was very beautiful, as well. 

The highly anticipated Black vampire romantasy title of 2024! Perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo and Chloe Gong.

Book 1

The atmosphere was intriguing with an interesting magic system. Obviously, I’m obsessed with how Black the characters are while still being diverse in other ways. The author is Ethiopian and found a way to incorporate her culture into the story in ways that I very much appreciate.

There is a sort of enemies to lovers subplot in this. I appreciate that it remained a subplot, and I love that it’s ACTUAL enemies — not just mild dislike for one another.

The beginning was so convoluted. I had access to this book in both audio and physical form. I started with audio and switched to physical because I was having a very hard time understanding what was even going on for the first couple of chapters. There were many passages that I had to re-read to comprehend.

Additionally, the story started to drag somewhere in the middle for me, and I took almost a week off from reading it because I was in such a slump. There were definitely parts that could’ve been shortened or changed to fix the pacing. Part of this pacing issue was the result of a plot change around the halfway point. We start off with a clear mission in the beginning, but it shifts into a different story by the end. (I would compare it to how the first half of ACOTAR was drastically different from the second half.)

Onto the characters. Our main character is Kidan, and while I enjoyed that she was the definition of morally grey, she was annoying and impulsive. She has a goal but is in her own way because of how hardheaded she is. Plus, her ideas and hatred of vampires stems from one of them doing something wrong, so she wants to kill them all. This seems very genocidal to me, and if we applied this to other groups, it would be… problematic. I couldn’t really align with her tunnel vision and found it hard to empathize with her at some parts because of this. Her focus was so narrow and filed by vengeance. Susenyos was fine as well. He wasn’t as volatile as Kidan and had an interesting enough backstory. At times, he was unnecessarily antagonistic, but I enjoyed him. The background characters truly meant nothing to me.

Overall, I wanted to fall in love with this book but I just “liked” it. I think I am interested enough to read the sequel whenever that comes out, but in general, there were just some parts that fell flat for me that I was really excited to explore. I still think this is a really good debut novel and can’t wait to see what else the author comes up with.

Nik ✨

Starting with what I enjoyed:

The atmosphere was intriguing with an interesting magic system. Obviously, I’m obsessed with how Black the characters are while still being diverse in other ways. The author is Ethiopian and found a way to incorporate her culture into the story in ways that I very much appreciate.

There is a sort of enemies to lovers subplot in this. I appreciate that it remained a subplot, and I love that it’s ACTUAL enemies — not just mild dislike for one another.

The parts I had issues with:

The beginning was so convoluted. I had access to this book in both audio and physical form. I started with audio and switched to physical because I was having a very hard time understanding what was even going on for the first couple of chapters. There were many passages that I had to re-read to comprehend.

Additionally, the story started to drag somewhere in the middle for me, and I took almost a week off from reading it because I was in such a slump. There were definitely parts that could’ve been shortened or changed to fix the pacing. Part of this pacing issue was the result of a plot change around the halfway point. We start off with a clear mission in the beginning, but it shifts into a different story by the end. (I would compare it to how the first half of ACOTAR was drastically different from the second half.)

Onto the characters. Our main character is Kidan, and while I enjoyed that she was the definition of morally grey, she was annoying and impulsive. She has a goal but is in her own way because of how hardheaded she is. Plus, her ideas and hatred of vampires stems from one of them doing something wrong, so she wants to kill them all. This seems very genocidal to me, and if we applied this to other groups, it would be… problematic. I couldn’t really align with her tunnel vision and found it hard to empathize with her at some parts because of this. Her focus was so narrow and filed by vengeance. Susenyos was fine as well. He wasn’t as volatile as Kidan and had an interesting enough backstory. At times, he was unnecessarily antagonistic, but I enjoyed him. The background characters truly meant nothing to me.

Overall, I wanted to fall in love with this book but I just “liked” it. I think I am interested enough to read the sequel whenever that comes out, but in general, there were just some parts that fell flat for me that I was really excited to explore. I still think this is a really good debut novel and can’t wait to see what else the author comes up with.

This was such an incredible debut book. The writing style drew me in and kept my attention the whole time. The enemies to lovers was well done, the characters were truly enemies and still by the end they hadn’t completely given their hearts to each other. The motives of the characters were explored and questioned and I loved the morality questions posed to and by the actions of the characters. I really enjoyed the plot twists and the development of the storyline, it wasn’t a straightforward plot which I loved. I’m looking forward to the sequel and what Girma puts out next

Alex

Ralie Sutton

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.

Immortal Dark

Reviews

Highlights