Immortal Beloved — (2010-2012) Young Adult. Publisher: Nastasya has spent the last century living as a spoiled, drugged-out party girl. She feels nothing and cares for no one. But when she witnesses her best friend, a Dark Immortal, torture a human, she realizes something's got to change. She seeks refuge at a rehab for wayward immortals, where she meets the gorgeous, undeniably sexy Reyn, who seems inexplicably linked to her past.
Nastasya finally begins to deal with life, and even feels safe — until the night she learns that someone wants her dead.
Cate Tiernan, author of the popular Sweep series, returns with an engaging story of a timeless struggle and inescapable romance, the first book in a stunning new fantasy trilogy...
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 Immortal Beloved
Nastasya is a burned-out immortal who has spent hundreds of years trying to avoid any sort of real emotion. With her equally jaded friends, she spends all her time in endless, meaningless carousing. She’s not very likable at first, but that’s the whole point. When her friend Incy’s casual cruelty gives Nastasya a wake-up call about what her life has become, she doesn’t like herself much either.
Horrified with herself, afraid of Incy, Nastasya does the only thing she can think of. She turns to River, a woman who offered her help many decades ago. River runs River’s Edge, a halfway house for immortals that serves as part rehab, part magic school. Troubled immortals go there to relearn an appreciation for life and to study positive spellcraft. Nastasya doesn’t quite fit in at first but eventually comes to enjoy her stay at River’s Edge, though her attraction to standoffish “Viking god” Reyn unsettles her, as does a rivalry with a catty female immortal. Sometimes the characters seem more like 16-year-olds than the decades- or centuries-old beings they really are. Again, though, I think that’s the point. It’s why they needed River’s Edge in the first place. Despite their age, some of these characters have never had to mature.
I expected to find the rehab/life lessons aspect preachy or cloying, but instead it’s surprisingly heartwarming. Nastasya has a compelling, believable journey as she tries to become a better person and figure out what she really wants out of her life. Cate Tiernan does a great job with her character arc, for the most part.
Less successful is Nastasya’s brief flight from River’s Edge. I can see the narrative reasons why Cate Tiernan wanted Nastasya to go to Boston; she learns a valuable lesson there, and the reader gets another vivid glimpse (the scene with Incy at the beginning provides the first) of the negative magic practiced by unscrupulous immortals. However, I can’t see why Nastasya, the character, would choose to go there. It doesn’t make sense logically or emotionally. She’s afraid of Incy and doesn’t want him to know where she is, so she runs away to hang out with mutual friends she and Incy share? It seems out of character.
I also had trouble getting into the romance aspect; Reyn is too cold throughout most of the book. This is a trope that shows up in a lot of young adult romance but that rarely works for me as a reader. Maybe I’m just too old for the “he’s being a jerk because he likes you” thing. Then, when more of Nastasya’s past is revealed, the potential relationship takes on some overtones I found disturbing.
Finally, while I realize Immortal Beloved is the first book in a projected trilogy, I’d hoped to see a little more plot development in this installment, especially as it’s 400 pages long. There’s a ton of development in Nastasya’s character — and the book is well worth reading for that — but not a lot of movement on the Incy front.
Nonetheless, I’m definitely intrigued enough to keep reading the Immortal Beloved series. Tiernan seeds some tantalizing clues into the story, and I want to see if my guesses are right! That, and I look forward to seeing what Nastasya is capable of, now that she knows who she is and what she wants.
—Kelly Lasiter
 Darkness Falls
Darkness Falls is the second in Cate Tiernan’s IMMORTAL BELOVED trilogy. In Immortal Beloved, the first book, we met Nastasya, a burned-out immortal seeking enlightenment and redemption at the pastoral River’s Edge community. Darkness Falls continues her story, and book three will be titled Immortal Light.
Darkness Falls has the polar opposite of middle-book syndrome. Nastasya has a fantastic character arc here. She went through a huge amount of growth in Immortal Beloved, but all of that is tested in this book. Nastasya and River’s Edge suffer a spate of ill luck, and she begins to think she is inherently, irredeemably evil and has unwittingly corrupted River’s Edge with her darkness.
Just when she’s feeling lowest, temptation beckons. Her old friend Incy returns, and doesn’t seem quite so bad to Nastasya anymore. He offers a return to the life of mindless luxury and debauchery that she once enjoyed with him and their friends. Oblivion has its allure, when compared to painful psychological work. But she’s not quite the same as she was before River’s Edge, and something seems… off.
Through all her epiphanies and setbacks, Nastasya goes through a huge amount of character development in Darkness Falls, and the plot is scary and emotionally compelling. I liked the Nastasya/Reyn romance better this time too. By the end, Tiernan had me rooting for them as a couple. Reyn — terrible past and all — makes a great foil for Incy in that Reyn, unlike Incy, is trying to become a better man.
The focal point here isn’t really the romance, though, but Nastasya’s journey as she strives to shed her selfishness and find her own personal power. Then, near the book’s end, Tiernan gives us a tantalizing hint of a shadowy villain on the horizon, one that Nastasya has never even heard of before but who may be affecting the lives of all immortals. I can’t wait to see what happens in Immortal Light. —Kelly Lasiter
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