When Body Snatchers Collide: An Immortal Longings book review.

*SPOILER WARNING*

CLICK HERE to purchase Immortal Longings in multiple formats on Amazon!

My wife has observed me rekindle my love for reading towards the last half of 2023. Unbeknownst to me, she was able to acquire some books for me as Christmas gifts. All she knew was I enjoyed the fantasy and sci-fi genre. Immortal Longings by Chloe Gong was among the selection she picked out for me. Based off the title alone I was a bit skeptical because it sounded like it was very much a romance novel. Even if it was a romance novel, I was dead set on reading it because my wife took the time to really pick something out, she thought I would enjoy.

Immortal Longings by Chloe Gong transports you to the futuristic dystopian capital city of San-Er in the kingdom of Talin. We're introduced to prince August Shenzhi surveying the city he wishes to rule. San-Er is truly a city that never sleeps especially when the yearly games are about to take place.

Every year San-Er picks 88 "lucky" citizens to fight to the death for the change to gain unfathomable riches. While the ruling class of San-Er live in opulence, the common citizens live in a perpetual state of quicksand. The harder you fight, the faster you sink. But if you don't to get out, you'll end up drowning anyway. This year's games are VERY different because prince August intends to bring in a ringer; long thought dead princess Calla Tuoleimi. The winner of the games is always given an audience with despised King Kasa which is exactly why August needs Calla to be declared winner. Calla has been devising a way to kill King Kasa and August intends on helping her achieve objective. Of course, August isn't doing this out of the kindness of his heart, he has desired to usurp his adopted father for years after watching the Kingdom of Talin and its capital decline into a state of squalor. Little does August know that an old childhood friend Anton Makusa also intends on winning the games to acquire the incomprehensible cash prize.

The long history of our 3 main characters help to keep driving the story forward. Each one of them has their own objectives and will not hesitate to kill anyone that stands in their way, even each other. All three of our main characters have similar feelings about the terrible state their capital is in, but they have 3 very different plans to return the kingdom of Talin to its former glory. We even get an enemies to doomed lovers' relationship between Calla and Anton that seemed to organically work its way in to the story. I've noticed a recent trend among new fantasy novels to shoehorn an enemies to lovers' story somewhere into the B plot to keep up with the trend. I'm not sure if it was just the nature of the battle royale premise, but Chloe Gong did a really nice job of finding a way to organically build the romantic relationship between Calla and Anton.

The battle royale is a tried-and-true way to drive a story forward, but what makes Immortal Longings battle royale so interesting is the inclusion of this worlds magic system.

In this world every citizen has Chi (the innate magic source). Chi level varies person to person and those coming from royal bloodlines tend to have much greater Chi than the normal person. This Chi allows those that have manifested the gene to "body jump". "Body jump" allows a person to invade someone else's body as long as they also have developed or even an empty host. This system of body jumping keeps not just the characters on edge, but the reader as well. You never know when a rival contestant will strike. Is it the merchant hawking their wares, the sweet old woman sitting on the street corner smoking a cigarette, or maybe the one of the children chasing each other through the busy San-Er streets? At first body jumping may seem like an unchecked magic system, but any character willing to body jump is truly gambling with their lives. In this world, only 2 souls or Chi signatures can occupy a single body, and there is an ethnicity (or race?) of people called Weisanna that cannot be occupied by another soul. If one attempts to body jump and is rejected too many times their Chi is drained, and they suffer a Chi sickness which they cannot recover from.

Immortal Longings does a good job of pulling me in with the futuristic dystopian setting that reminded me a lot of Megacity One from the Judge Dredd comics. With Weisanna as the city guard operating as the Capitals iron fist, the overabundance of surveillance cameras, young current and former royals looking to bring down the current regime. This book set me up to absolutely dive headfirst into a world of corruption, political intrigue, revolution and conspiracy. Unfortunately, Chloe Gong just wasn't able to delve deep enough into a lot of the interesting ideas she presented in the first half of the book.

I've seen other's compare the San-Er games to the Hunger Games, but to I didn't see it as comparable. In the Hunger Games, the games play a very pivotal role in the story. Whereas in Immortal Longings, the games aren't the catalyst they're just the backdrop to the events of the book. Around a third into the book, we are introduced to Pampi, another contestant in the games that has managed to work her way in to the capital's surveillance room and is manipulating the games and gaining intel for what we assume is to win. We then find out a few chapters later that she's actually part of the Crescent Society (a faction within San-Er that is considered a necessary evil to the current regime). Pampi ends up becoming the new head of the Crescent society and has developed new Chi techniques that no one has seen before. Pampi has acquired these powers through studying (what I assume is) forbidden texts and she learns that human sacrifice is what is needed to push their Chi powers to the next level. Pampi and the Crescent Society members don't even cause a flash of Chi when they body jump (side note every time a person body jumps a bright flash of Chi occurs). She seemingly becomes a god at one point, able to use her Chi to physically harm opponents in combat and not just to body jump.

Pampi and the Crescent Society were built up to be the secondary and arguably the primary antagonist of the story, but she ultimately is killed by August without a struggle. August is described as having such power Chi that nobody can invade his birth body. He's extremely proficient in body jumping but his combat prowess is not up to par with characters like Calla or Anton. Yet he killed Pampi (a literal god at the time) in a blink of an eye.

The Weisanna were another group that could have and should have been explored in much greater detail. An entire ethnicity/race of people that completely nullify the worlds entire magic system should not have been relegated to just the city guard. There were hints of a social order within the Weisanna themselves that is barely discussed. I understand this is intended to be a series (I believe it's a trilogy) which brings me to my biggest gripe with not only this book, but many other books in the genre.

A lot of contemporary fantasy authors do not write self-contained stories anymore when intending to create a world that spans several books. While an overarching plot can definitely stretch over 2 - 6 or even more books, I feel that each book should at least resolve a portion of that overarching story. Immortal Longings truly leaves me longing for answers to questions that are surfaced throughout the book (pun intended). By the time I got to the last 30 pages of the book, I started to realize I have so many questions and there was no way I was going to get an answer for any of them.

Otta wakes up demanding to be taken to the palace...Then we just move on, I guess that's meant to be explored in book 2? We then see Calla and Anton clash in the final bout of the competition. I actually enjoyed this encounter. I was expecting them to play it safe and they declare their love and refuse to kill each other. I was pleasantly surprised when Calla truly kills Anton. Now, I don't want you to think I'm assuming Calla truly killed Anton in this moment. Chloe Gong throughout the book described what a true death looks like. A grey pallor sets in, their eyes drain of all color, and the body stiffens and appears to waste away and become a husk. We are shown that Antons body showcases those exact characteristics of a true death. Chloe Gong goes out of her way to have Calla's internal voice state that she TRULY killed Anton. Yet we were still given a "twist" ending that didn't make any sense.

The entire book August was described as being impervious to invasion. His Chi is too great for anybody to invade his body, but Anton out of nowhere has invaded his body?! Anton is shown attempting to copy the Crescent Society technique of body jumping without a visible flash, but he failed, and it was never brought up again. Apparently, he figured it out somehow. We are told and shown that his previous love Otta is dying from Chi sickness and there's no saving her. The whole reason Anton is competing to begin with is to pay for Otta's medical bills and to hopefully cure her. Then we find out that Otta knows that August planned to kill King Kasa when they were teenagers but backed out at the last moment. August has his Weisanna, Galipei poison her, which didn't make much sense to me. He was intending to have Calla kill the king (which she did) so even if by some miracle Otta were to awaken, nobody would believe her anyway. The King would be dead and Otta and Anton were banished long ago so nobody would care what she would have to say.

Now that Otta is alive, and Anton is in August's body, it kind of seems like that conflict is resolved before it can truly start. Anton would just find a way to tell Otta that it's him in Augusts body and loose end is tied up. There could be an interesting dynamic between Otta, Anton and Calla that can be explored in book 2. Also, now that we know that Calla is actually a farm girl that invaded the body of the actual Calla Tuoleimi, we could get to explore the idea of "self". Does the soul of the person you invade truly dissipate after a certain time? Could we see the real Calla find a way to gain control of her consciousness again? These are all very interesting ideas that I would like to see expanded upon in book 2. I just wish we got some sort of resolution.

Book 1 doesn't feel complete to me. I don't think every book in a series should be a stand-alone, but it should at least wrap up some of the tertiary ideas introduced throughout the story. The ending we got seems to have been done just to get us to book 2. It seems like Chloe Gong had a great idea for a story in the first half, then got very excited about book 2 and tried to sprint her way there.

I don't want to appear as if I hated this book, I did not. For the most part I enjoyed the journey, but I was sorely disappointed when we reached our destination (which was more of a rest stop). Immortal Longings ended on a cliffhanger that I would be indifferent to falling off of. I loved the ideas that were presented, the city of San-Er, the possibility of stories to be told outside of the city walls, the different factions that could be explored. I wanted more of the political intrigue, backstabbing, and revolution that comes along with a failing ruling class. It had so much potential and just fell short in so many ways.

Would I recommend this book? Yes, but with some caveats. Go into this book for the ideas and possibilities it presents. It's like watching a straight to DVD action movie. You're not expecting a masterpiece of cinema, but you can expect decent action and to be entertained for a little while. You can shut your brain off and just have some dumb fun. But if you're looking for a book with rich fantasy world building and deep exploration of class systems in a futuristic dystopian setting...you may want to look elsewhere.