A review by adancewithbooks
Immortal Longings by Chloe Gong

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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