K.J. Charles's Reviews > The Immortal City

An epic fantasy romance with a setting so well developed it feels as strong as the characters. The author writes the world and magic of this series with incredible confidence and depth--there's never a sense that what's on the page is all there is; we just know there's massive amounts of untold history and theology and past spooling out, unsaid. (Which is a very good thing. My least favourite thing is a fantasy world where the author make you read endless self-indulgent silmarillioning; my second least favourite is a fantasy world with the depth of wallpaper, where the characters play out their roles on a flat un-thought-through setting. This book falls into neither pit.)

It's an incredibly assured performance, especially in a second book, and that carries through to the writing, which is lush to the point of dense in description, counterbalanced by fairly terse dialogue. Ari, the immortal stripped of his memories, is a mess; Hei is a bit of a mystery seen through Ari's eyes, but his intense love and fierce courage shine through Ari's confusion. There's a real sense of threat, of epic-scale magic and sacred mystery, and of a love that won't give up or give in. And the city itself is beautifully realised, decadent, weird and haunting.

I had an ARC from the author, who is a friend and colleague, but I don't leave reviews I don't mean.