“The thing I’d been running from could be my salvation or my final doom. I needed to know which.”
Brimming with mystery, magic and stirring emotion, Helyna L. Clove’s Imbued is a deeply character-driven and vulnerably intimate fantasy tale that honestly reads like a mad feverdream in the best way possible. It’s somehow both darkly disturbing and mesmerizingly wondrous, and it will pull on your heartstrings in all the most unexpected ways.
Something that immediately hooked me about Imbued is the fact that our protagonist, Calla, remembers nothing about her past except for some vague recurring nightmares. She wants nothing more than to live a simple life as a servant to a noble family, but when the estranged family heir comes back home, her entire life is uprooted. As a magehunter, Gray senses her hidden and untamed magical powers, yet instead of capturing her, he offers to help her control them. What follows is a quietly powerful tale of trust, self-discovery, trauma, healing and defiance, all set against the backdrop of an escalating mage uprising that could very well destroy their world.
Now, the amnesia trope can be very hit or miss for me, but somehow I just never seem to be able to resist its alluring air of intrigue and mystery. Right from the very first page, I was just totally enraptured, and I could not stop turning the pages to figure out how all the puzzle pieces would fall into place. Clove honestly does a masterful job of trickling in just the right bits of information at exactly the right times, which makes Imbued a dangerously addictive pageturner despite the fact that it’s not a particularly fast-paced or action-packed narrative.
Moreover, Calla’s intimate first person narration positively entranced me, and as an introvert myself, I really appreciated that she is not your typical bold, brash and loud fantasy heroine. While I would have like a bit more characterisation outside of her all-consuming anxiety and emotional trauma, I ultimately really enjoyed her harrowing yet powerful journey of growth. Clove doesn’t shy away from exploring the darkest realms of the mind through Calla’s perspective, and I deeply appreciated the brutally raw and authentic exploration of mental health. Calla’s intrusive thoughts and emotional spirals were terrifyingly well written, which only increased the already intense looming sense of dread that hangs as a dark thundercloud over this story.
Though, in a weird way, I almost feel like Calla’s voice might have been a bit too strong, as I personally found most of the side characters to pale a bit in comparison to her. Most of the supporting characters in Imbued were little more than a vague name to me, either because they felt a bit underdeveloped or because they remained so elusively enigmatic (mostly in Calla’s backstory) that I just could not get grasp onto them.
However, I did really enjoy Gray (who almost serves as a foil to Calla), especially because his dynamic with Calla is filled with so much fragile distrust and tentative hope. At first I thought he would be just another stereotypical ‘broody mysterious love interest with a tragic past’, but he turned out to be so much more than that. While his motivations remained a bit murky for me, especially at the start, I soon came to appreciate his duality and I found it so touching to see how he tenderly guided Calla to help her unlock and embrace her full powers.
Even though some of their ‘lessons’ felt a bit forced and exposition-heavy to me, I also can’t deny that I was gobbling up all of the little tidbits of information about the magic and lore of this world. I especially loved how Imbued has one of those nature/life-force based magic systems that leans more into the soft and mystical side, yet at the same time also comes with dire consequences; consequences that we get to experience first-hand as the story unravels and escalates.
The way that Calla’s inner conflict and mysterious backstory was interwoven with the external political conflict looming in the background not only shocked me in the best way possible, but it also resulted in such a rewarding, smooth and immersive reading experience. Not to mention, Clove’s lush and evocative prose created an absolutely entrancing atmosphere, and I loved how her wild imagination imbued (pun very much intended) this world with so much rich culture and breathtaking vibrancy. There’s almost a bit of a cozy, mystical mood to this story, which is exactly what makes Imbued stand out from the crowd for me.
While this story is absolutely unlike anything I have ever read, I think fans of Sarah Chorn’s The Necessity of Rain, Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone, and Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi will find much to love here. Imbued is an intriguing start to a boldly ambitious duology, and after that brutal cliffhanger I am desperate to see how this story continues. Come for the riveting mystery and soft yet dangerous magic, but then stay for the flawed underdogs, complex emotions, and gorgeous prose; what a wild ride.
Thank you to the author for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. Imbued is scheduled for release on September 6th, 2024.
