Eternal Ruin by Tigest Girma
*Contains spoilers for Immortal Dark*
Hot on the heels of the acclaimed release of Immortal Dark, Tigest Girma returns to the seductive world of Uxlay University in Eternal Ruin. The final chapters of Immortal Dark had readers desperate for the next installment in the story of Kidan and Susenyos, and Girma has served up another riveting tale in this second book.
Blood Bonds and Betrayal Beneath the Ivory Towers
Infused with layers of dark academia, romantasy, mystery and more, Eternal Ruin is a heart-pounding novel that will take your breath away from the very first page.
Kidan Adane has successfully graduated from Dranacti, the philosophy taught at Uxlay to first-year students who study and scheme their way to graduation. She completed that final and brutal task and finds herself still haunted by the events, those feelings fueling her anger and the violence that simmers in her blood.
Graduating means bonding with a vampire, and Kidan has bound herself to not only Susenyos, the vampire who was set to inherit Adane House thanks to the final wishes of her parents, but also to Samson, the violently unstable rogue vampire who Kidan and her friends allowed into Uxlay and, in doing so, broke one of the most sacred laws of the University.
Kidan’s lost sister, June, has also come back into the picture, and not at all in the way that Kidan would have expected — or hoped. Kidan feels betrayed. She feels lost. She feels so incredibly angry at the way that June seems to be turning her back on her, choosing the rogue vampires instead of her own sister, even after all that Kidan did to protect her and to find her after she disappeared.
When Power Demands a Price, Even Blood May Not Be Enough
When Samson offers a way to get back at June, in exchange for a betrayal of Susenyos, Kidan finds herself turning down a darker path than perhaps even she saw coming.
A new philosophy that offers a more aggressive method than what she and her classmates are learning in their graduate classes finds Kidan one night in the library, the text appearing amidst the books she had selected, and as she delves further into the teachings, determined to be the first of her friends to master her house — and most certainly to beat her sister to it — Kidan begins to fall further into the darkness that threatens to overwhelm her.
Will she betray Susenyos, even as their relationship — no matter how twisted — deepens? Will she and June ever go back to being sisters as they were before? Will she master her house before it’s too late?
Girma has crafted a delightfully dark tale, weaving powerful emotions into elaborate magic systems and creating a world that all but demands to be read. This is a book that keeps you up at night, insisting on “just one more chapter” as the story unfolds.
Twists, Temptations, and Tension That Tightens with Every Page
New secrets, new tension, new jaw-dropping scenes pull you in deeper and deeper as these multi-faceted, complicated characters vie for power, control, love and validation. Despite the fantastical elements and layers of magic, the characters are so incredibly human — even the vampires — and Girma peels back the outer layers to give readers a full look into their innermost thoughts and desires.
Girma’s writing is mesmerizing, from the intricate details to the suspense that is maintained throughout, and she keeps readers on the edge of their seats until the very end.
These are beautifully messy characters. Kidan is angry, she’s violent — but there are so many moments in which she sees a mirror of herself in Susenyos, in Samson, and finds herself confronting those innermost triggers and catalysts. Susenyos has such a weight on his shoulders and such guilt for the people he left behind, and the sparring between Kidan and Susenyos, or between Susenyos and his fellow vampires, is fascinating to witness.
We’re never quite sure what the next move will be, who will come out on top, or in the end, who was really good or bad — right or wrong. Are any of them truly good? Well — they’re certainly great to read.
If you love a book with thrilling action, heart-stopping romance that will leave you more than a little breathless, complicated characters, devastating vampires and clever, powerful humans, then Eternal Ruin is for you!
About Tigest Girma:
Tigest Girma is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Immortal Dark. She is an Ethiopian writer based in Melbourne, Australia and splits her time between writing and teaching. Passionate about exploring East African characters and myths, her work weaves Black stories with the dark and fantastical. In her free time, she can be found rewatching her comfort shows where the villain gets the girl. She invites you to visit her at tigestgirma.com or tiktok.com/tigestgirma.
