Reviews with content warning for Genocide - Immortal Longings

I love Chloe Gong’s writing. I think she has immaculate control over her language. I love her descriptions, even when they’re dark or gory. In this novel, her writing really brought the world to life. I felt like I could see the city, see the participants running about, could smell the food and the stink in the alley. I enjoyed reading this novel thoroughly.

Characters: 4.75⭐️/5

Now again, I’m a big Chloe Gong fan, so maybe there’s a bit of bias here, but Gong writes characters incredibly well. Specifically, she writes morally grey characters with pure ease, crafting their motives, their situations, and their desires into the story with ease. I would’ve loved a touch more from our side characters – as well as to not have our background characters feel so background – but these are small gripes.

Plot: 4.5⭐️/5

Alright, Antony and Cleopatra retelling. How does Chloe Gong just reimagine Shakespearean tales in the most interesting way possible? I don’t know, but I do love. The longing, the love, the competition, the forced trust, the game: all of it is so brilliantly written, you can’t help but love it. My only gripe is with the ending, with her twist which leaves us wondering how are two main characters will move forward in love (because they will, right?). I felt like it didn’t need to happen in the way that it happened, strictly for the sense that I knew exactly what had happened to Anton, and I don’t know why that wasn’t a plan Calla and him created, instead of it being a betrayal. I understand that it echoes the betrayal Antony goes through at Cleopatra’s hands, but it felt forced the way it happened – and a little obvious. All in all though, this is a small complaint for a brilliant plot.

Who Should Read This Book?

Fans of Chloe Gong
Fans of Shakespeare and fantasy novels
Fans of enemies to lovers
Fans of Hunger Games, but want it magic

Content Warnings?

Death, murder, blood, injury, injury detail, gore, child death, sexual content, death of parent, cursing, suicidal thoughts, toxic relationship

Post-Reading Rating: 5⭐️/5

Hi, Chloe. Um, I need the next one pretty, pretty please.

Final Rating: 4.75⭐️/5

Content Warnings

azrah786's review

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3.5

[This review can also be found on my BLOG]

**I was provided with an ARC through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review**

CW: violence, blood, gore, injury, murder, death, child death, death of parent, genocide, war, colonisation, classism, kidnapping, suicidal ideation, medical content, terminal illness, grief, sexual content
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Another Anthony and Cleopatra reimaging, another let down.. Not to say that I didn’t enjoy aspects of this book but this now happens to be the second time I’ve been disappointed at the outcome of a retelling around these figures despite the fact that the dynamic they evoke interest me SO MUCH.

Now I’ll admit I’m not as familiar with Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra as I am with Romeo and Juliet so maybe that is what put me at a bit of a disadvantage. However, I do think that Chloe Gong may have been a bit too ambitious with how much was actually thrown into this first book more than anything else if we set aside the fact that I wasn’t able to appreciate all the nuances to the original play it was inspired by.

Down to the bare bones it is a story surrounding a handful of individuals wanting to overthrow a king, each for their own reasons and there is a tournament to the death involved in which two of the main protagonists are participants. I think where things got a bit flimsy surrounded this tournament as though all the action and tension was written quite well the games themselves sort of felt a little disconnected from the rest of the story for me.

The setting of San-Er gave glimpses of Ancient Rome but I believe it is inspired by the Kowloon Walled City (Hong Kong). However, I couldn’t help but compare it to the Shanghai of These Violent Delights and how the city there shone as its own character.
I felt in Immortal Longings the story didn’t really capture the feel of the setting maybe until halfway through and again I feel like this came down to how Gong was also trying to bring this dystopian Hunger Games vibe in for the games on top of everything else. Don’t get me wrong Gong’s writing and descriptions of the atmosphere were great I just feel like they didn’t link up to the narrative straight away so it all felt like a separate thing.

What I was most looking forward to in the book was the reluctant alliance dynamic. It is one trope that I really enjoy reading about and the one that formed between Calla and Anton was great, full of the right amount of banter and camaraderie (if it can be called that) that comes about when two opposing forces have to team up. Where their relationship fell short I believe is with the romance side of things or at least the fact that it came around too quickly.

In fact this can be said to be the case for a couple of things in the book for instance coming back to how much was going on, for an adult fantasy it was too short. Certain scenes and developments could have been given more room to breathe in the narrative with a couple more pages. I think why the romance didn’t immediately work for me was because Anton’s motive for winning the games was to save “his ex” but then romance rapidly ensued with Calla and we didn’t really get enough time showing them working together to justify it.

More than the games I was intrigued by the wider politics that were happening in the background and the mystery that it brought about. But the best part of the book was without a doubt the power/magic system. This whole idea of people having the means to jump out of their body and take over someone else’s was so compelling and made for some great twists in the book. I caught onto a few of them but they were honestly written in so well I was still impressed. Also the whole idea of autonomy and morality and identity that comes in was really interesting especially when you have characters constantly jumping around and others who refuse to do so.

So despite not loving this one as much as I had hoped, it has still left some fascinating questions behind which have me super keen to get my hands on book two as well as that killer ending! It was one twist I saw coming but am super excited to see develop.

I plan on trying to get my hands on Shakespeare’s work if I can before book 2 releases and then give this one a reread so I can catch all the call backs that I am sure are there because that was one big highlight I had with These Violent Delights!
Final Rating – 3.5/5 Stars

Content Warnings

taryn_g's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Content Warnings

adancewithbooks's review against another edition

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dark slow-paced

1.25

Thank you to Hodderscape and Netgalley for the review copy in exchange for an honest review. This does not change my opinion in anyway.

After having read three books by Chloe Gong that I for the most part enjoyed, I was actually looking forward to her foray into (new) adult fantasy. Unfortunately this book did not work for me at all.

One of the big plot points of this book is that Call is using the yearly game to get close enough to the king to kill him. Five years ago she killed her parents, the rules of the co-kingdom and would have killed the current king if she had not been stopped. Now she has been in hiding for 5 years in their walled city.

For five years she does absolutely nothing. She just hides. No plotting, no planning and al of a sudden this years game is going to be it. There is no explanation, nothing on what she has been doing these 5 years that explain why she is now moving or why she couldn't move. And lets not forget, how can you hide for 5 years in a walled city, near the caretakers she had while in the palace. She has an own appartment and a kitty. She doesn't work but has money. And lets not forget that she should be standing out as she doesn't body jump like the rest of them.

That is the big power in this book. Body jumping. There is a yellow flash when you jump so everybody knows. People have an own identification code to still be able to identify themselves. But there doesn't seem to be anyone stopping from jumping into a random person every 5 minutes. No consent needed. And if they are just about to get killed in that body, lets just jump to the next one. Tough luck for that body's owner. Even worse luck for those that don't have the jumping gene. They are meaningless and at any point they can be used and have no idea what has been done with their body. This is not at all adressed in the book and it feels very icky.

The game doesn't make sense. Why kill when the chip just has to get pulled or removed from a person? Make it make sense? Why would you even enter this killfest voluntarily because they all have to sign up, only the last 89 get chosen from all those signed up. And great there is something nice at the end, awesome. Money for those poor can be a great incentive. I get that. But the book doesn't actually talk about that. About previous winners and what it got them. And it is in the middle of the city. Nobody cares about collateral damage. What? Well there are barely any rules so whatever. If that joined school teacher just pulls a kid in front of them you just kill them both.

Adding on to that, I didn't really care about any of the characters and I also have isues with a lot of the plot twists that I don't want to get into because of spoilers.

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