Summary:
Love kills.
Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, unleashed a life-changing apocalypse that reshaped the world and cursed humankind with immortality. Now injury, old age, and death mean nothing. Until the Soul connects with its Twin. Once true Love is found, immortality is lost.
The Priestesses of Aphrodite exist to hunt down and send those blessed souls to Aphrodite’s Golden Palace in the afterlife. They are devout and efficient… if only a little blinded by the lustre of gold and the taste of blood.
Carys Epistro’phia, an infamous Priestess, will go to great lengths to put her hands on a chest with fifty thousand gold coins. Including turning a blind eye to Twin Souls who rule over an isolated island and are willing to hire her unique skills to bring their daughter back home. Princess Ishana, a fragile and naive girl who has never died before, is Carys’ key to the treasure… as long as she arrives home with her soul intact.
But in this sacrilegious contract, not everything is as it seems, and sometimes the heart has its own schemes.
Review:
This is How Immortals Die by Nicole Hidalgo is one bloody, sapphic journey under the guise of capital ‘L’ Love. This isn’t your standard fantasy romance, oh Hades no. So be warned, for not only will there be blood, but also necromancy, heart magic, moon magic, immortal rebirths, and demigods. You get the gist, it’s dark AF. But isn’t that cover so pretty?
TiHID is told via first person point of view and follows Priestess of Aphrodite, Carys, as she takes on a contract to bring Ishana back to her Love-ing parents (her parents are called Twins who are in Love, but also it’s against the rules in this world) on this mysterious island. Carys (KAH-riss, not KER-iss hehe) is a lone wolf, and is a fantastic protagonist because she is great at hunting down Lovers but also isn’t nuts like all her brothers & sisters of Aphrodite, aka devout. Carys is incredibly snarky, enjoys a good bloodletting, and has many layers to her, especially considering she likes to write poetry. Ishana is also a great character but I don’t want to spoil anything, so I’ll just say that she is fantastic and her arc is stellar. There are a number of well defined, interesting characters introduced throughout this story, but this is Carys & Ishana’s story, and if they weren’t so intriguing or well-written, I don’t think this story would have been as good. Luckily, they are both amazing!
I loved every aspect about this world. The Greek Goddess, Aphrodite, caused an apocalypse (rightly called Aphrodite’s Vengeance) and being in true Love is pretty much a sin. While we don’t get a lot of backstory on the Vengeance (per the author herself, this will unfold throughout later books), enough lore is given, leaving us with a lot of unanswered questions, but I found this to be a smart decision. Aphrodite’s Priestesses hunt down Lovers, to absolute brutal ends. They also have heart magic which is even more intense than your common blood magic. You can never go wrong with blood magic in my humble opinion. The world is a mixture of ancient Greek culture (pantheon included) and almost pre-Industrial Revolution in that there are guns & Shakespeare (he legit existed in this world) but everyone still uses swords and armor. The land of Haillikós is pretty neat because there aren’t cities per se, but more lands divided up by a item name. There is the Tunic, the Belt, the Tiara, the Orb, the Crown, etc. I thought that was pretty unique and cool. Also within this world we have a number of different cults, and for someone who studied classical archaelogy, this hit all the right notes for me.
But this world, and the story at large, is brutal and this story withholds no punches. Things can get fairly bloody and explicit on page. And there was one scene where Carys and Ishana do something very bloodtastic and I was kinda shocked how gruesome it was. But it made sense for both these characters and this world. The blood magic was very grisly, but I enjoyed the hell out of it. The concept of immortals and their rebirth was pretty fun. There is a scene of a regrown limb and it reminded me a lot of Deadpool. There is also some pretty vivid sex scenes and a very funny sex toy escapade that made me laugh out loud. But to counter that, there are some very touching moments between these two characters that shine against this bloody background.
The prose is excellent and the story is very evenly paced. There were a handful of times I felt a scene break could have been used because something dramatic happened and then the next paragraph we were in a completely different location, but that never detracted from the read. The setting is lush, the description even lusher. I was completely immersed in whatever scene we were in; the gruesome, brutality of war, the quiet, cozy moments between these potential Lovers, the all-out calamity of the climax.
There is one thing I want to highlight but I cannot say what it is for spoiler reasons, but there was this massive cliffhanger/stylistic choice dropped on us at the 50% mark (during a sex scene, of course) that absolutely had my jaw on the floor. I have never seen something like this done in a book before and it could have been so bad had it not been done to perfection. Kudos, Nicole Hidalgo, kudos!
This is How Immortals Die was an incredible sapphic romance, one that I enjoyed immensely. I’m very eager to see where the next book goes.