My review:
Perfect urban fantasy! Almost… There is one nit-picky thing about a military/militant feminist working naked (I hope he develops this character further), BUT I loved this and give it a big shiny 5 stars for – awesome plot, creating a believable world where magic doesn’t exist but mythical creatures do, witty dialog (I so want this to be a movie), even first person POV which I generally don’t like to read worked so well here. Can’t wait to read Hellenic Immortal and any more he has in this series.
Book Blurb:
“I don’t know how old I am. My earliest memory is something along the lines of fire good, ice bad, so I think I predate written history, but I don’t know by how much. I like to brag that I’ve been there from the beginning, and while this may very well be true, I generally just say it to pick up girls.” –Adam the Immortal
Surviving sixty thousand years takes cunning and more than a little luck. But in the twenty-first century, Adam confronts new dangers—someone has found out what he is, a demon is after him, and he has run out of places to hide.Worst of all, he has had entirely too much to drink.
Immortal is a first person confessional penned by a man who is immortal, but not invincible. In an artful blending of sci-fi, adventure, fantasy, and humor, IMMORTAL introduces us to a world with vampires, demons and other “magical” creatures, yet a world without actual magic.
At the center of the book is Adam.
“I have been in quite a few tight situations in my long life. One of the first things I learned was if there is going to be a mob panic, don’t be standing between the mob and wherever it is they all want to go. The second thing I learned was, don’t try to run through fire.” –Adam the Immortal
Adam is a sixty thousand year old man. (Approximately.) He doesn’t age or get sick, but is otherwise entirely capable of being killed.His survival has hinged on an innate ability to adapt, his wits, and a fairly large dollop of luck.He makes for an excellent guide through history . . . when he’s sober.
Immortal is a contemporary fantasy for non-fantasy readers and fantasy enthusiasts alike.
Author Bio:
Gene Doucette is a novelist, a screenwriter, a playwright, a humorist, an essayist, and a few other things. He is, in other words, a writer, and thank goodness for that because the other options were alcoholic (still possible) and axe murderer (less likely.)
There is durable evidence of his existence as a writer, although not as much as one might hope. Beating Up Daddy: A Year in the Life of an Amateur Father, a collection of early humor columns in which Gene rightly takes his children to task for existing, was published in 1999.
A few years later Gene published The OTHER Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: A Parody. This was written shortly after discovering that the actual survival handbook was being sold in, of all places, the humor section of the bookstore, which was unutterably sad insofar as it’s not at all funny. The parody, however, is very funny indeed.
Somewhat more recently, Gene decided to do something with the many other humor columns he had lying around. This was after he discovered Amazon doesn’t charge
anything for Kindle publishing, but before discovering what a big pain it is to format something for the Amazon Kindle. And so was born Vacations and Other Errors in Judgment.
And then there’s the fiction. In March 2012, Immortal was republished by The Writer’s Coffee Shop. Immortal is a mash-up of science fiction, contemporary fantasy, historical fiction, first-person confessional, humor, and action/adventure. A little bit of everything, in other words; it’s a lot of fun. And better, in May 2012 the second book, Hellenic Immortal was published. Gene is currently working on the third book.
And there are the screenplays. Charlatan is a feature length spec script that won the Scriptwriting Network’s Hollywood Outreach Program. It’s about a professional psychic– a fraudulent one– who has to help the FBI stop a killer of professional charlatans before he becomes the next victim. It’s based on an early unpublished novel also written by Gene. And there are a number of short films, the most recently produced being Parting, by 386Films.
Finally, Gene has had a number of stage plays produced. Deus Ex Quanta, a full length script incorporating quantum theory and chaos theory into a homicide investigation, has been produced on multiple occasions in four countries and on three continents. Slightly less produced are Artifact– a discussion of faith with a dual backdrop of alien abduction and plague era France– and In the Valley of the Shadow, a one act about conspiracy theory and paranoia.
Gene lives in Cambridge, MA, with his wife and two children, and a varying assortment of pets. Although the kids are in college, so really, “wife, varying assortment of pets, and the dirty clothing of two children” might be more accurate.
Contact Gene at genedoucette@me.com
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