When a routine hanging goes wrong and a murderer somehow survives the noose, the man announces he is an immortal. And not just any immortal, but Cayal, the Immortal Prince, hero of legend, thought to be only a fictional character. To most he is a figure out of the Tide Lord Tarot, the only record left on Amyrantha of the mythical beings whom fable tells created the race of half-human, half-animal Crasii, a race of slaves.
Arkady Desean is an expert on the legends of the Tide Lords so at the request of the King’s Spymaster, she is sent to interrogate this would-be immortal, hoping to prove he is a spy, or at the very least, a madman.
Though she is set the task of proving Cayal a liar, Arkady finds herself believing him, against her own good sense. And as she begins to truly believe in the Tide Lords, her own web of lies begins to unravel…
Every once in a while a book comes along that absolutely captures my imagination. Where everything fits so nicely, there’s little I would change. Other than a questionable prologue, the Immortal Prince was one of those for me. Fallon’s books typically move fast, and that’s important. But I always talk about pacing in the novels I love.
This time I want to talk about the world. A world in which a handful of people have been exposed to matter from the Tide Star. This has made them immortal. Of the twenty-two, nine are Tide Lords, though with the ability to wield significant Tide magic. We’re talking about the ability to destroy continents and reshape the weather pattern of an entire planet. But the power ebbs and flows with the Tide. And the Tide has been out a long time. People think these Tide Lords are myths. Up until Arkady Desean begins investigating a prisoner claiming to be one. A prison that her husband’s men had hung, but who didn’t die.
And these immortals are frightening. Nothing can kill them. Which, over the course of thousands of years, has led them to become almost entirely amoral. Time has taught them they will suffer no personal consequences for their actions. So they do whatever they want. It really makes the idea of invincibility scary, the thought of what it would do to most people’s minds over time.
I loved this book. 5 phoenix hatchlings hardly conveys how much.
