Review: Immortal Fire by Annette Marie

Posted September 13, 2024 by Lola in Fantasy, Review, Romance / 1 Comment

Immortal Fire (Red Winter Trilogy #3)
by Annette Marie
narrated by Emily Woo Zeller

My Rating: 4 stars

Genre: Paranormal Romance
Age Category: Young Adult
Type of romance: m/f

Blurb:
Once, Emi believed the heavenly gods were righteous and wise, while the earthly yokai spirits were bloodthirsty and evil. But with a traitorous deity poised to destroy her world, and the yokai standing as humanity’s only defense, the lies of her upbringing have toppled to reveal a far more terrifying reality.

Despite the looming threat, Emi can’t escape her greatest distraction: Shiro, the fox yokai who has so deftly claimed her heart for his own. Soon—too soon—she will have to break the curse that binds his magic and memories. And once the ancient power inside him awakens, the yokai she loves will be changed forever.

As the earthly gods gather to wage war against the heavens, Emi and Shiro must gamble everything to turn the tide against their immortal, all-powerful foes. Together, they will find a way to save her world—even if it means losing each other.

My Review

I received a free audio copy from Tantor Audio and voluntarily reviewed it.

Immortal Fire is the third and final book in the Red Winter Trilogy and I started this right after I finished book 2. I binge listened through this series and I had a great time listening to this series. Immortal Fire is the epic conclusion to the series and I liked seeing everything play out. It start shortly after the previous book ended and then slowly builds up the the winter solstice when everything comes together in an epic battle.

This book was great just like the previous ones. I liked reading more about the character, experience the epic magical battles and I was eager to see how it would all play out and whether Emi and Shiro would get their happy ending and how. I appreciated how the motivation of the antagonist made sense. This is one of those books that if you enjoy the series so far you’ll likely enjoy this one too. The whole series reads more like one large book with one continuing storyline, even though the places the books start are well picked, but I am glad I was able to read it as one long book.

One of my favorite parts of this series is seeing Emi grow and change throughout the series. She really finds herself and who she wants to be and that was awesome to see. I also liked seeing Shiro figure out who he is as well as find love. And Yumei was just such a stable steadfast present and there were some interesting scenes involving him, I really liked reading about him and his friendship with Emi.

The epic battle toward the end was well done and I enjoyed seeing it all play out and the way everyone played a role in it and how all their work and finding people in the previous books was important. The wrap up was well done although personally I would’ve happily skipped the epilogue. The epilogue was clearly recorded later and the voice of the narrator sounded different as well as the voices of characters and the way the pronounced the Japanese words. It felt jarring after spending so many hours with this book. I also liked the ending before the epilogue more as it had more impact for me personally to leave it on that powerful moment.

To summarize: Immortal Fire is a great ending to this series. It has interesting characters, epic battles and a heartfelt romance. I enjoyed seeing things play out and was eager to see if Emi and Shiro would find a way to be together as well as defeat the amatsukami who wants to destroy the world. I really liked reading about the characters and seeing how much Emi has changed throughout the series was awesome. I thought the ending and wrap up was well done. I didn’t feel the epilogue added much for me personally and the narrator’s voice and pronunciations were different as it was recorded later which felt jarring. All in all I can definitely recommend this series and had a great time listening to it.