Review: Immortal Longings

Immortal Longings by Chloe Gong
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Normally I'm more than willing to go to bat for Chloe Gong, especially given the absurd and irrational hatedom she gets from Book Twitter types. But for this, her adult debut (when her previous books are pretty much YA in marketing only), inspired loosely by Antony and Cleopatra instead of Romeo and Juliet for Secret Shanghai, and set in a densely packed cyberpunk twin city inspired by the infamous Kowloon Walled City of mid-20th century Hong Kong...I'm sorry to say that this book just doesn't meet the standards I've come to expect from Gong.

Don't get me wrong, Gong's world building skills are as sharp as ever with this book, especially once you reach the end and it becomes clear that Kowloon was a major inspiration for the setting of San-Er. The in universe politics and family ties are complex as it gets too, with several major players being royal children by blood or by adoption, but you never know who's who and what's she because so many people in this city-kingdom have the ability to jump from body to body almost at will. In practice, the story ends up being a hybrid of Court of Fives (also Antony and Cleopatra inspired, but with Hunger Games gladiating) and Altered Carbon (with people able to essentially re-sleeve almost at will, though with limits - too many jumps in a short amount of time will sicken you, some people are naturally immune to body jumping, etc. etc.)

But what really sinks this book for me is that unlike Gong's Secret Shanghai series, it's really hard, if not impossible, to care about the characters. Just about everyone, but especially Calla and Anton, comes off selfish and uncaring about anyone around them, with little of the likability of Roma or Juliette or Benedikt or Marshall or Rosalind. Blake's review also pointed out the inherent creepiness of the book featuring sex scenes with variously body-surfed individuals, and while it's pretty clear in universe that no one really has any compunctions about that...well, there's a reason why people criticized Wonder Woman 1984 for including a sex scene with Diana and a strange man she saw only as her lost love Steve.

At this point, I'll probably only pick up the second book because this one had such a diabolical cliffhanger, but maybe I'll have forgotten everything I'd like to forget about this book anyway by the time the sequel comes along. At least I still have Gong's Secret Shanghai conclusion, Foul Heart Huntsman, to look forward to even sooner.

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