Exclusive: Chloe Gong’s ‘Immortal Longings’ Excerpt Will Get Your Heart Racing

If you’re already trying to figure out what you can expect from Chloe, then get ready because the official description from Gallery/Saga Press will get you even more excited:

#1 New York Times bestselling YA author Chloe Gong’s adult epic fantasy debut, inspired by Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, is a fiery collision of power plays, spilled blood, and romance amidst a set of deadly games.

Every year, thousands in the kingdom of Talin will flock to its capital twin cities, San-Er, where the palace hosts a set of games. For those confident enough in their ability to jump between bodies, competitors across San-Er fight to the death to win unimaginable riches.

Princess Calla Tuoleimi lurks in hiding. Five years ago, a massacre killed her parents and left the palace of Er empty…and she was the one who did it. Before King Kasa’s forces in San can catch her, she plans to finish the job and bring down the monarchy. Her reclusive uncle always greets the victor of the games, so if she wins, she gets her opportunity at last to kill him.

Enter Anton Makusa, an exiled aristocrat. His childhood love has lain in a coma since they were both ousted from the palace, and he’s deep in debt trying to keep her alive. Thankfully, he’s one of the best jumpers in the kingdom, flitting from body to body at will. His last chance at saving her is entering the games and winning.

Calla finds both an unexpected alliance with Anton and help from King Kasa’s adopted son, August, who wants to mend Talin’s ills. But the three of them have very different goals, even as Calla and Anton’s partnership spirals into something all-consuming. Before the games close, Calla must decide what she’s playing for—her lover or her kingdom.

Already can’t get enough? We got you covered with a special exclusive excerpt that you can start reading below. So get cozy, grab some of Chloe’s previous books, and don’t forget to pre-order your copy, because you’re going to want to read the rest of it when Immortal Longings finally drops.

An Excerpt From Immortal Longings
By Chloe Gong

If Calla hadn’t grown up in the Palace of Heavens surrounded by maps and encyclopedias, she might have believed that a different kingdom beckons at the edge of San-Er, right where the land ends and gives way to sea.

She stands at the cliffs, looking out into the water. Each wave collides with harsh impact. Sprays salt up onto the city in droplets and splashes. There’s nowhere else in San-Er that feels like this, like she could dive past the jagged rockface, slice into the water, and then just keep going and going. Ten paces to her left, she would merge back into the alleyway and the city of San would envelop her again. But so long as she stands here, she is the ruler of this new kingdom, the conqueror of a large, unknowable terrain.

Calla breathes in deep, folding her arms over her chest to fight off the chill. Along the rest of the coastline, the twin cities have built small bays to let fishermen push their boats out to sea, but the truth is, no one goes very far. South of San-Er, there is only nothingness. Venturing too great a distance risks complete disorientation, losing all chance of return. Some of Talin’s bravest travelers say there are other island-nations out in the waters, but if they do exist, they are of no use to the kingdom. As far as Talin is concerned, their only foreign contact is in the north, past the rural provinces and bleeding up into Sica.

A shiver dances along her spine. Calla turns over her shoulder.

The palace claims that, before there was just San and Er in the southeast, ruled by one family and two kings, there used to be a third island city along the edges of Er, hundreds of years ago. A third king, who had also held some part of Talin, fleeing when Sica came. Then its ruler was struck down by divine intervention, deemed unfit to govern, and when he refused to relinquish his throne despite edicts from their gods, the entire city sank into the waters along with its civilians.

Calla has always had trouble believing that story. In the era before surveillance cameras and electronic records, the palace could change the truth whenever they wished, and their tale about a third city that once stood in the distance seems too convenient to be true. Unlike the rest of the kingdom, Calla doesn’t even believe in divine will. If there are gods, then they are cruel for letting Talin carry on like this. Day after day, with no end in sight.

Calla finally steps away from the cliffs. She returns to the alley that will take her back into San, ducking into the tight passage with resolve tightening in her stomach. The time for lingering has passed. Her course of action today, which is not so different from these past few days since the Daqun, is to linger around the busiest parts of San, where she’s most likely to find the other players. It’s early morning, but the streets fall darker the moment she leaves the city periphery, moving farther inland. Grimacing, she pinches her nose to block out the acrid smells as she passes a row of factories. They rumble belowground, machines churning long bundles of noodles running side by side with those producing coat hangers and rubber plungers.

“Careful!”

Calla is ducking before the call even comes, swerving away from two men and the stepladder carried between them. They’re covered in sweat, stripped down to the waist from the factory heat. Some cramped streets in San exist without fuss, where one can only hear the all-surround symphony of their dripping pipes. Others are their own revolving worlds, bursting with activity of every sort. When Calla finally reaches a quieter walkway, she releases her nose and takes a deep breath. The air still stinks. Water collects in every grimy nook, but wet rot is better than the stench of trash.

She looks at her wristband. No alarm. The day of the Daqun is always a whirlwind, followed by silence thereafter. The palace does this on purpose, giving the games a false lull before they start sending their location pings. In such a dense environment, players could hide themselves away forever if they wanted to, and because there’s nothing entertaining about that, each player is sent an alarm once a day to direct them toward their nearest competitor. Without these daily pings, they would be playing entirely based on luck, hoping to catch a flash of a wristband in the open. One round could last years. Even if Calla watches the newsreels and tries to remember her competitors’ faces, most will change bodies at breakneck speed. Only Calla stays unchanging, opting to put a mask over her face instead.

She adjusts her mask cover, her face growing hot when it traps in her sigh. There is only one objective to playing in the games. Wipe the other players out as fast as possible, get her victory, kill the king. The quicker she does it, the quicker they are freed from this awful state of living. The quicker this collective suffering can ease and stop clanging through her ears every second.

As if the wristband heard her urges, it suddenly buzzes against her skin. Calla’s heart begins to pound. Finally. She almost forgets her training, tempted to surge forward immediately in her eagerness. But her body knows how to regain control, its muscle memory running through the same series of commands: Breathe in, calibrate, formulate action. As she whips her arm up to tap the screen, she heaves a deep breath, letting the stench of the street still her nerves. They’ll ping players in pairs or in small groups, which means it won’t happen until they’re within range of one another. The palace is always watching the wristbands move; they’ll put in the alarm when the players aren’t close enough to be ambushed, but aren’t far enough to engage in a wild goose chase. Calla has time. She lets the rush of incoming battle temper her bones.

2 players nearby. Choose.

An arbitrary decision. She keys in the number 1 at the bottom of the screen, then looks around to take inventory of her surroundings. To her left, an impenetrable wall. To her right, another wall, but with a window that peers into a gambling den.

11 meters up.

Calla moves. She shoves her foot against a jutting brick and climbs in through the window, drawing cries of concern when she lands with a thump on the sticky den floor.

“Don’t mind me,” she says. She blows a kiss, which is rather difficult through the mask. “I’m only passing through.”

Outside the gambling den, she skids into the main stairwell of the building, then sprints up the steps three at a time, boots clunking. Calla calculates the eleven meters, bursting through the first inner door she sees and emerging in a busy market area, shops on both sides and her wristband trembling incessantly. Her hair whips into her eyes as she peruses the scene, trying to catch an attack before it comes. Nothing seems out of the ordinary.

Nothing except Calla, standing in a leather coat with her sword sheathed at her side while shoppers in their plain cotton button-ups stare at her.

“Where are you?” Calla mutters under her breath, gauging the distance between floor and ceiling. About two meters, probably. Flat floor, flat ceiling. How many other levels has she climbed? Six? Which means . . .

Calla hurries through the market, searching for some other exit. She passes a candy store. A noodle shop. Finally, in front of a butcher whacking his cleaver down onto a pig’s carcass, Calla spots a hatch inside his stall.

“Using this, thank you!” Calla calls, diving for the hatch and lifting it with a grunt. She jumps down before the butcher can respond, dropping into the passage running below the market. Vendors store their perishables here to keep them fresh, cold air running at a temperature that raises goose bumps on her arms immediately. She lands among a row of animal carcasses hanging by large hooks, her hands slapping onto the bloody floor to steady herself. Though she would have assumed the blood to be dried and old, when she lifts her hands and stands straight, her palms are marred with bright crimson. It’s fresh.

She’s already late to the party.

Calla’s gaze whips up. Her eyes adjust to the back of the storage space, just in time to catch a player slash his knife across the throat of another, splattering more blood everywhere. The body drops, red pooling onto the floor. In seconds, it has flowed within distance of Calla’s boots, the dimly lit passageway reeking of the metallic stink.

“Fuck.”

Copyright © 2023 by Chloe Gong. From the upcoming book IMMORTAL LONGINGS, published by Saga Press/Gallery Books, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Immortal Longings, by Chloe Gong, will be released on July 18, 2023. To preorder the book, click on the retailer of your choice:

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Entertainment Editor

Tamara Fuentes is the current Entertainment Editor at Cosmopolitan, where she covers TV, movies, books, celebrities, and more. She can often be found in front of a screen fangirling about something new. Before joining Cosmopolitan, she was the entertainment editor over at Seventeen. She is also a member of the Television Critics Association and the Latino Entertainment Journalists Association. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.