Book review: The Immortal City

In the heart of Venice, a woman is sacrificed to a forgotten god, sparking a mystery lost for thousands of years.

Dr. Penelope Bryne is ridiculed by the academic community for her quest to find the remnants of Atlantis, but when an ancient and mysterious script is found at a murder site, she flies to Venice determined to help the police before the killer strikes again.

Penelope has spent her entire life trying to ignore the unexplainable and magical history of Atlantis, but when she meets the enigmatic Alexis Donato, everything she believes will be challenged. Little does she know, Alexis has spent the last three years doing his best to sabotage Penelope’s career so doesn’t learn the truth—Atlantis had seven magicians who survived, and who he has a duty to protect.

As Alexis draws her into the darkly, seductive world of magic and history, Penelope will have to use her heart as well as her head if she is to find the answers she seeks.

With the new MOSE system due to come online, and Carnivale exploding around them, Penelope and Alexis will have to work together to stop the killer and prevent dark magic from pulling Venice into the sea.

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Thank you to BHC Press and Netgalley for giving me an eARC of The Immortal City in exchange for an honest review.

If you loved that old Disney movie Atlantis about the dorky professor who was CONVINCED Atlantis was a real place and turned out to be right, then this is the book for you. That said, it’s definitely a different spin on the Atlantis tale—in The Immortal City, Atlantis was real, but then, because of various magical reasons, was destroyed. Only a few magicians survived, and they’ve spent thousands of years struggling to keep Atlantis secret while also maintaining the knowledge they’ve gained from being basically immortal.

It was a fun read, and while it wasn’t a new favorite and I probably won’t continue reading the series, I enjoyed how Kuivalainen wove together mythology and history and unexplained phenomena.

What I liked

Found family characters

Let’s be real, if a story includes characters who don’t have any biological family so they’ve formed their own friend family, I’m gonna love them. The magicians of Atlantis embody this. They’re such a great representation of a group of friends who have been together for a long time and have sooo much history—except in this case, it’s thousands of years of history. Relationship drama, trauma from the fall of Atlantis, saving each other’s lives…it’s all just part of the friend group backstory. It was really fun to see the characters being so distinct from each other but also play off one another really well, and feel like a real friend group.

The setting

The story is set in Venice, and anything set in Venice means bonus points from me. It’s a beautiful city, and Kuivalainen did a wonderful job describing it. Part of the plot occurs during Carnivale, so it was really fun to read about all the celebrations and costumes. In addition, one of the big responsibilities of the magicians in the story is maintaining the Archive, which is the repository of magic and really all knowledge gained in the millennium since Atlantis was destroyed. But it’s also magical itself, and chooses favorites and will reveal books it wants you to read, and I loved how the Archive and house it’s in had personality and was character in and of itself.

What I didn’t love

There wasn’t anything that I outright hated, but there were some aspects that fell flat for me.

Penelope and Alexis

While I liked reading about all the secondary characters, the two main characters were just meh for me. I really wanted to like Penelope, the professor who has spent her career trying to prove the existence of Atlantis and been shunned. She goes to Venice to help solve a murder that includes ritualistic writing related to her Atlantis studies, and is almost like a kickass female version of Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon. But…she was also kind of annoying. She was so impulsive, and didn’t think anything through—the whole ‘going to Venice thing’ wasn’t because the police asked her to. A detective emailed her a question about the crime scene, and instead of responding, she hops on a plane to Venice. Like, okay?

Alexis is the Atlantean magician and the second point of view in the book. Again, I didn’t hate him. But I wasn’t super excited about him either. He’s some perfect magician almost-god who’s spent his thousands of years protecting the other magicians, meaning he has some serious emotional walls built up that Penelope—of course—comes in to knock down. It could have made for some really interesting character development, but instead the focus is on the fast-moving relationship between Penelope and Alexis, and less about their growth individually. Which leads me to…

A lot more romance than expected

Don’t get me wrong. I love a good romance novel. It’s not necessarily my go-to, but I enjoy them, and love rooting for characters to get together when there’s a romance thread in a book I’m reading. But I came to this book expecting more about fantasy and magic, and it ended up being way heavier on the romance between Alexis and Penelope. Even that wouldn’t have been as bad, except it felt like their relationship moved super fast. There was some fun flirting and “does he like me or not” vibes at the beginning, and that was a good romantic tension. But then all of a sudden they’ve decided that they’re soulmates and are completely obsessed with each other, and it felt like a big jump.

The complicated plot

While I loved the premise of the book, the execution of the plot itself was a little confusing. I’m not sure if I just took too long to read it or if all the weird, Atlantean names threw me off, but I was constantly confused which characters were which and how everything fit together. I think for other readers it probably wouldn’t be a problem, but I felt a little lost throughout the book.

The Immortal City by Amy Kuivalainen releases on September 19. Click here to preorder!

Are you looking forward to The Immortal City? Let me know in the comments!

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