Author Tigest Girma achieved the same in 2024 with her magnificent New York Times bestselling novel Immortal Dark. The trilogy-starter and its 2025 sequel, Eternal Ruin, are an intoxicating fusion of supernatural fantasy, dark academia, Gothic horror, revenge thriller, and love-hate romance, starring a Black ensemble and showcasing original lore drawn from East African mythology. Between the vampire's renewed prominence, the irrefutable need for studios to center diverse stories, and audiences' responsibility to seek out and support said narratives, Girma's tour de force deserves a television adaptation that's worthy of her mesmerizing creation.
'Immortal Dark' Brilliantly Reimagines the Vampire Mythos
Finding her missing sister, June, forces 19-year-old Kidan Adane to finally embrace her heritage. The orphaned Adane siblings are linked by literal blood to Uxlay University, an exclusive society founded around humanity's tenuous coexistence with vampires. Vampires receive a reliable supply of blood in exchange for allying with a mortal family and their descendants. Each family's House measures their power within Uxlay's hierarchy by how many individual vampiric bonds they can accumulate.
Meanwhile, the university instills Uxlay's ancient laws into each generation's minds, then tests the teenagers' capacity for ruthless survival. Discovering the truth behind June's disappearance requires Kidan to pretend to conform to her blood-soaked ancestry, exorcise Uxlay's harrowing secrets, forge her inner demons into weapons, and confront the sole vampire sworn to her House, Susenyos Sagad — calculating, enigmatic, and the primary suspect in June's kidnapping.
Immortal Dark was inspired by Girma's fondness for paranormal romance, a comfort she discovered in her adolescence after her family relocated from Ethiopia to Australia. The pivotal spark arrived when she rewatched Twilight in early 2020. Realizing the film lacked any representation to which her family could relate, Girma wondered: "What if vampires originated from Africa?" The author's astonishing debut weaves both familiar and rare ideas into a seamlessly constructed novel. Every element derives from or further informs Immortal Dark's lush atmosphere, abundant psychological depth, nuanced thematic priorities, and comprehensive worldbuilding: generational conspiracies, arcane artifacts, a quasi-sentient building where rooms shift to match an occupant's emotional state, and the vampires' unique abilities.
'Immortal Dark' Is What Fantasy TV Needs
Immortal Dark and Eternal Ruin are unflinchingly mature young adult works capable of addressing heavy topics (child abuse, depression, misogynoir,systemic violence) with both gravitas and grace. Compared to even her most accomplished peers, however, the union of Girma's craft and her perspective raises the bar beyond quantifiable measure. Kidan is nothing short of a revelation. Immortal Dark's protagonist begins her journey with blood-stained hands. Far from anyone's stereotype, she's an immeasurably complex and contradictory young woman — capable of tenderness and cruelty, haunted as much by her palpable trauma, grief, and abandonment as her visceral and justified rage about a violative world that revels in "punishing" young Black girls by stealing their innocence, safety, and lives. Uxlay, where institutional corruption and classism operate with impunity, is no exception.
Girma explores Kidan's breadth of qualities with care, which includes anchoring her lead's most soul-damning decisions in entirely empathetic motivations. Kidan's relentless quest for vengeance and knowledge, not to mention control over her circumstances, emerges from her earth-shattering love for June. Her devotion to her sister, the only person with whom she shares a sense of belonging, propels Kidan's conflicted but willing descent into self-destructive moral grayness. When Kidan's emotional reckoning morphs into a form of self-actualizing acceptance, the heiress begins to claim her legacy and her future, wielding her power like a woman assured of its potency. Kidan both aches onto the page and blazes forth as a force too profound to be contained — towering, tragic, utterly human, and furious female resistance incarnate.
As for the other driving idea behind Immortal Dark, Kidan's electrifying cat-and-mouse dynamic with Susenyos delivers the textured enemies-to-allies-to-lovers arc of readers' dreams. An ethereally attractive immortal who desires an empowered and complex Black woman, the elusive, paradoxical Susenyos serves as Kidan's mirror, companion, guide, and obstacle. They're eternally bound and viciously romantic, as cutting as a jagged edge and labyrinthine as a coiled serpent. The pair slink between desiring and detesting each other; the only guarantee is their tendency to intimately encourage one another's worst impulses. No soul except the heiress and her bonded undead either witnesses or recognizes their respective intricacies (sin, regret, fear, longing). Kidan and Susenyos could reshape the world if they followed their overwhelming vulnerability with trust. Doing so, however, requires relinquishing control.
Even though drawing comparisons between Immortal Dark and Interview with the Vampire is almost too easy, for the sake of readers who aren't unfamiliar with Girma's work, both stories are similar insofar as their flawed characters frequently commit horrendous acts but remain forever compelling and lovable. A successful Immortal Dark adaptation requires insightful decision-makers who are capable of understanding and translating the series' nuances without a hint of dilution or disrespect. It requires, in no uncertain terms, the oversight of Black and brown creators. The right Immortal Dark television show, one with teeth and fangs fully bared, would take the world by storm.
Image via AMC
Image via Little, Brown and Company Books for Young Readers
Image via FairyLoot and Little, Brown and Company Books for Young Readers
Image via Little, Brown and Company Books for Young Readers
Image via FairyLoot and Little, Brown and Company Books for Young Readers
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