BOOK REVIEW: IMMORTAL DARK BY TIGEST GIRMA
And the seductive nature of Black vampires in a Dark Academia
Metamorphosis is the process where we become changed by our own volition. It is also the journey by which the living transcend towards death. Pursuing metamorphosis is, for me, the entire reason we read books. We follow characters we find believable humanity within and see how they ascend their own inevitabilities into their highest unchangeable truths and then climb their way back down the ladder into this mortal world.
There is no mistaking the well-honed talent of Tigest Girma in reading this book. A writer who reads like a writer can look at the first line of Chapter 1 and conclude that we are dealing with someone who is capable of understanding how to design a hook that enchants the read with a truth and create a surprising and inevitable conclusion that cannot be shaken. The trouble is always in maintaining that.
In Immortal Dark, a dark academia novel where a woman enters a forbidden romance with a her rival in a battle for inheritance among the human-vampire society of Uxlay University. Our protagonist is not a hero. In some cases, she isn’t even a simple girl trying to survive. She is actively the monster of a personality people shy away from everyday. She’s willing to lie about horrible, violent things to get what she wants and to protect who she loves. She’s hurt people without blinking. She rationalizes other monsters based on her own selfish biases, and won’t apologize for it.
And so, she is perfectly mirrored with the bloody and violent vampire who has served her family for generations. In this supernatural world, the vampires who swarmed Africa were bound to three laws by the Last Sage almost a thousand years ago: they cannot drink from any humans but 80 distinct bloodlines, their greater vampiric powers have been largely diminished and new vampires cannot be made without killing the vampire who has made them in exchange — limiting the number of Vampires in the world dramatically. This has created a symbiotic partnership between the 80 human bloodlines — the acti — and the Vampires who must align with and protect these 80 for sustenance — the Drainiacs.
Their civilization is called the Dranacti as a representation of their two worlds becoming one.
Simple? Not exactly.
Semi-Spoilers ahead.
The Mystery
The book has a central mystery surrounding the disappearance of a young Black girl, our protagonist’s sister. There is a commentary here that people might not catch readily if they aren’t willing to clock. So, I’ll say it plainly: this is a racial book.
The commentary is that Black girls are disappearing everywhere and only their loved ones care to take it not only seriously, but as a life-or-death urgency to fix. That people accept that Black girls are not only dead, but their bodies are not important enough to recover.
Our protagonist doesn’t just think her sister is important, she thinks she is worthy of ruining her entire future for. The first chapter begins with the question: what happened to her sister. Every chapter she is chasing her sister and inflicting wounds on enemies with the overwhelming madness of a woman desperate to throw her life away just to bring her home. I’ve seen some reviews frame her as jumping to conclusions. I don’t think that is fair: I think she pursues logical conclusions to their upmost end in a world where no one else is helping her process or cares as much as she does. In some cases, you will lean on an accomplice or friend to settle a matter of insecurity. They will care about your issues as much as you care about them and they will advocate for your right to protect what will come afterwards. But, this girl has no one. And everyone is a danger. These creatures are evil. And she is also evil, and knows it. In a situation like this, the closest assumption is the best.
By the end, you find yourself completely unwilling to find her assumptions to be unwarranted. These people are willing to lie with a straight face and those who cannot lie with a straight face are cannon fodder for those who are much more willing to participate in the bloodsport that is the culture of the vampire society.
The mystery has no easy answers and creates openings for the reader to answer what happened without all of the details of what makes this world complete. The very nature of what it means to be an acti, a heir or even a Draniac is important to figuring out why anyone would want to take this orphan Black girl. And that preludes the introduction of every potential player in this violent mystery where rivalries have been as longstanding as the supernatural culture itself.
The Supernatural
This book is like a love child of Anne Rice and Toni Morrison. The world in this book is filled with mist between the characters and their world they walk through. It isn’t too overt where it doesn’t need to be, which I respect. The natural world blends with the supernatural one, too.
We don’t ask questions about where the magic impacts everything, because we understand the society these people live in does not care about ordinary people who are in pain or hurting or deprived by a system. This is a world where bleeding is a daily occurance and the houses war for control over one-another’s creations. Where the immortal creatures that are tethered to these families have vested interest in seeing these families find financial and social success so they can also take advantage of it.
And, they simply don’t care about poor people, even if they are all Black.
The culture that embodies almost all Dranacti is filled with psychological riddles, political manipulation and maneuvers and darker motivations reflecting a secret to their culture and these Three Bindings that created their culture. No civilization is true if everyone doesn’t maintain the same level of sacrifice and if you do not share a nature at the core of your being. The Vampires of Immortal Dark are proud, vainglorious and unhinged. They will not hesitate to punish others or to exact cruel bullying for the simplicity of the art they find in the limits of a human’s psyche.
The world that Tigest Girma has created does not pretend that we live in a culture where humanity will create paradise just because people co-exist. It doesn’t suggest the native alignment of mankind is evil either. What it does is figure out the reason why someone would be cruel to someone they do not care about, and why they would be cruel to someone they harbor private ambitions and care for.
The vampires are truly horrible to anyone without the power to punish them. This reality is aware of how people in a society with actual power will respect social subtleties. When the vampires trap a girl in a tree as a demonstration of how weak they think a girl is (despite how they actually care for this child as a member of their sworn House) we understand immediately that there is no logic to this, because cruelty doesn’t need logic. They did it because it was a show of strength. They did it because the girl was weak. They did it because who was going to check them?
And when our protagonist is outraged at this cruelty — as if they are not capable of worse — we understand that this lack of necessity while needing this girl is the issue. Not that anyone would do this, because this girl walks through a world where harm is only okay when justified — that there is no line of limit when you have people getting between you and protecting your family— but because nothing was gained in hurting this girl. Nothing but moments of ego and satisfaction.
Vampires are evil. Lawfully evil, as they bind themselves to rules and they slaughter and kill at the behest of the Heirs and leaders of their households who provides them blood, companionship and the honor of belonging to something that will introduce new things to their seemingly pointless immortal life of satisfaction from blood-spilling, psychological torture and pursueing archaic reminders of a life they loss.
I said the acti (humans) contain this evil too, but in truth: they embody lust, envy and greed. They chase to take. They take to live. They live to have. Our protagonist returns to this world and at first believes she is so completely different from this world she spent so long away from just to find out that actually her desire for her sister’s return — the inciting incident is a Black girl’s vanishing and the betrayal from their foster mother — and to be able to get her back she must be worse than them.
Especially when our protagonist discovers the true reward of being an heir of Uxlay University. The university campus is actually formed at the heart of multiple houses with only two at its center. Each house is alive and responds to the heir’s emotions, memories and feelings. They also have a power: they can each hold a law. A law is a rule that can break and bend even the laws of nature themselves to accommodate it and stretches to the end of the property. The houses form a boundary around the university and makes a special protection for all Vampire and Human in the society.
Thus the stakes of the betrayal for these powerful social groups and bloodlines is set: they all compete for dominance of this otherworldly power second only to the Laws that bound vampirekind into subjugation to the Dranacti. Vampires vie to be companions to an acti heir, to feed on them while also serve as the right or left hand to a force strong enough to subjugate the vampire’s own powers.
Blackness
I don’t think any of the characters aren’t Black. Most of the story focuses on the history and identity of Ethiopia — the author is ethiopian. There are elements to the food and identity that cannot shake from the reality of where these cultures most find their heart and honestly, I cannot get into it without tapping into some pleasant plot twists within the story.
What I do acknowledge is how this story depicts Black Excellence and elitism within a dark academia. The world is aware of privilege to the point it doesn’t hesitate to point it out while refusing to apologize for it. People don't participate in charity with a brown nosing effect, rather they weaponize charity as instruments of their power and control over the world. Even the way some vampires move about their heroism of Black vulnerable persons satisfies their vanity and deep desire to be worshiped for their power. Some even do these crusades with a lot less activity, simply becoming a sounding board and seeing themselves as honorable solely because they allow moments of their infinite and eternal memory to remember the names and stories of women who will otherwise lead short, tormented and forgettable lives. To them, they see it as humble and honorable of them to humor these personalities and while it can be called romantic in the sense of gothic novels, it is also the reality that the vampires simply don’t care.
Though, it is a particular thought exercise that everyone does care about race. The vampires love being Black. They know they’re Black. They do not use the justification that they are too ancient to remember what race does to a person. In fact, many see their higher duties as living museums of Blackness. They lean into the reality of the African continent as an oral tradition and with their eternity in life and in memory, they often tell tales or share memories when feeding that gives the impressions of a history filled with trauma. One vampire remembers the history of a ship; another remembers the true history of Africa before colonies touched it. The weight of what these Vampires know and pass on to one another and the acti they feed on is only as vital as your own desire to know what has been taken from this continent’s memory.
The voice of the book is specific. Black history is the prize that is at the heart of this community. But to go against the culture isn’t to resist your Blackness. There are just the truths of what this community stands for that frightens so many of the acti who are not heirs who can curry the favor of vampire guardians or pass the grueling lessons to obtain a sworn companion. The language of the Dranacti itself is seen as binding oneself to this community, and thus some choose to run from it. It is a healthy decision: no one is less than for it.
Writing
Tigas be writing they ass off.
The prose rejects the notion of sentimentality across the board and approaches a script that is sure that we will hate the protagonist sometimes. However, what it instead illustrates is a canvas of lust. Tigas is aware that the enticing part of darkness isn’t that it always makes you miserable — though it can — but it is also alluring because of the temptation to reject comfort and stand up on your power.
I don’t think this writing is for newcomers to the genre. Not just of gothic novels, or dark academia. I mean Black novels and the emphasis of jazz writing in the style of Toni Morrison. Toni Morrison has always had a way of writing with addiction on the tip of every syllable. It’s like cigar smoke or the velvet of lipstick. It’s sticky like sweat on a summer night in Alabama. It flows perfectly with sorrow and fascination. I was shocked to see this novel was for YA for all those reasons, but in truth I think that this is one of those many situations where a New Adult novel is denied its space because of marketing. I think it’s still time for the conversation that some things aren’t for children not simply because of the subject matter, but because when the industry undermines the technique expected of the age range, there needs to be a space where this technique can thrive.
I think the conversation starts with editors and publishers though. This book contains an art that would be wonderful for Freshmen Undergrad readers. I’ll personally be adding this book to my own syllabus cycle for courses on writing.
The metaphors not only fit the tone, but wears the tone like silk and velvet robes.
Conclusion
Immortal Dark is a psychological exploration of a society that is painfully aware of its own cruelty and the function of cruelty in the hands of the powerful.
Give it up for the vamp-gang.