Immortal Awakening

Originally posted at A Reading Brit

Shana reached out to me a few weeks ago to offer an eARC in exchange for an honest review. She's the first author I've had reach out, and after reading the synopsis, I was totally in! Vampire novels are one of my guilty pleasures.

Immortal Awakening is a debut novel following Ali, an unregistered human in a world where humans actively hunt and kill vampires. Not only is it a debut, the author is younger than I am. I'm always impressed with that. I've been writing since the age of 6 and still never managed to finish anything!

This book is another of those where the author seemed to take some time to bed in to the story. The first few chapters were super wordy, and I wondered if it was a mistake saying I'd review this. The vampire action started quickly though, and once I got to that, everything seemed to settle down, and I began to enjoy it.

The Characters

Ali – Ali is our main character. She's living alone in a rundown house as an unregistered human, struggling to get enough food to survive. Ali is a good main character. She's strong and her sarcasm levels are great. She's not afraid to stand up for herself, and that's always a good thing in novels, in my opinion.

Zeke and Zuriel – These two characters are encountered at the same time. I lump them together because to begin with, I had quite the problem telling them apart. The names Zeke and Zuriel were a little too similar for my poor brain to differentiate. It wasn't until later when I figured out who was who. There's nothing overly amazing about either character. Zeke is the more interesting of the 2, but there's little back-story to either of them, and I struggled to bring myself to care for him.

Xavier – Yeah, this guy I did care for a little. He seemed to be the only sane one amidst a bunch of crazies. You find out more about his past and his history that endears you a little more to him.

Those are the characters we hear from the most, but you've also got character names such as Kalabhiti, Cassius and Nardia. The names did annoy me a little. I guess they're supposed to be part of the world-building, but it seemed like the author was picking names that sounded fun and exotic, rather than anything that really seemed to fit in.

The World

The world-building is where this stepped up for me. We find out about how the world ended up in the state it was in, and I liked the depth this went into. I really felt like I knew the world, and the wider state of things, even though most of the book was set within the same couple of miles. The vampires here weren't just mindless blood-suckers, but they weren't necessarily kind either. The vampires have powers, each person has one stand-out power, and this was for me to read about. The way that worked, and the things that can be done with these powers were interested and impressive. I feel like some things weren't necessarily explained as well as they could've been, and some things seemed a little rushed, but overall, I enjoyed the world this was in and the way everything worked.

For a self-published novel, this was pretty well-edited. There was the odd typo, but overall, I was impressed with how this was put together!

Would I read it again? I don't think I'd need to re-read it again. I remember everything quite well, so wouldn't need to read it if there was another book.

Will I be picking up the next in the series? I'm not sure there is going to be one? If there was, sure!

Would I recommend it? If you like vampires and want to support a debut author, give it a go. It was a different take on the normal vampires, so that's always good.

Is it going on my favourites shelf? Afraid not. It was good, but not worthy of favourites shelf greatness.