Shannon C.’s review of Immortals: The Calling (Book 1) by Jennifer Ashley
Contemporary paranormal romance released by Love Spell 1 May 07
I knew about the Immortals multi-author series by Jennifer Ashley, Robin T. Popp and Joy Nash for quite some time, but I’ve been hesitating to read the books for one major reason. I’m a geek, and in high school I used to play table-top role-playing games. My favorites were the games put out by White Wolf, which happen to have titles like “Vampire: The Masquerade,” “Werewolf: The Apocalypse,” or “Changeling: The Dreaming.” Every time I saw the Immortals books featured somewhere, I invariably thought of those White Wolf games and I told myself that if I ever read them, I would invariably have to stop and ponder what clan, bloodline or gifts the characters would have.
Okay, so that’s the lamest reason ever for being hesitant to try a new series. But I was intrigued by the shared world thing that these three authors have going, and I figured it would be a way to try a few new authors so that I could see if I’d like any of their books.
Immortals: The Calling is only superficially similar to the premises behind those White Wolf role playing games I mentioned. There are vampires, werewolves, witches, etc. But there are also hot immortal demigods, which is definitely something you don’t see much of.
My fellow duckie Sandy M has already reviewed this book, and she summarizes the plot very well in her review, so I won’t waste much time on my own synopsis. I will say that though I did like this first book in the series, and I am really curious to see how the rest of the series will go, I didn’t love the book nearly as much as she did.
I like a strong heroine. A lot. I don’t necessarily need her to kick ass and take names, but I need her to add her own strength to her hero’s. And with a hero like Adrian, there was a good chance that poor Amber, our heroine, would be overshadowed, especially as compared to the rest of the characters. But to my relief, she wasn’t. She holds her own rather well, she knows her own strengths, and she manages to be a good partner for Adrian. That’s enough to make me forgive her for being a little bit bland in comparison with Adrian. She is also a witch, and it’s obvious to me that Ashley tried to base her magic-workings on real life Paganism, and I thought this was one of the world-building things that succeeded pretty well.
Adrian, by contrast, is quite the flamboyant hero. And being a demigod, that says a lot. He is fabulously wealthy, a great hulking package of testosterone, the son of Isis, and he has a sword that can morph into a snake. He’s been on a quest to fined his brother Tain for centuries, and when he is tortured he is really really tortured. All that leaves him an undeniably sexy, powerful hero, but in some ways he’s just a bit too much, and all the superlatives made it hard for me to connect with him as a character.
The plot starts out slowly, at least until about halfway through the book, when the pacing improves. The first half was a bit of a chore to get through, mostly I think because there were just too many secondary characters and too much backstory that needed to be explained, but I was really enthusiastically following along toward the end. The end was satisfactory, but it is clear that this is the first in a series, so there are a lot of dangling plot threads and it’s pretty clear where the next three books are going.
Since I mentioned the world-building, I will have to say that I didn’t find the setting particularly unique or compelling. We have pretty much every paranormal creature you can think of present and accounted for in this book and they all behave about like they would normally. The vampire is dark and good at seducing people, the werewolf is fierce and aggressive, and the dragon kicks a lot of ass and takes a lot of names, though not so much that he overpowers the awesome demigod hero. For this reason, I felt like the world-building had a bit of a kitchen-sink vibe to it, and I do have to admit that I felt kind of bad for the poor human schmuck who never really gets a first name who ends up participating in the goings-on, because he was the only one without that something extra about him.
I’m not sure that this series is going to make it onto my list of favorite reads of 2008, but I am curious to see where else it goes from here and will eventually read the next books.
Grade: B-
While investigating the murder of her sister, Amber is rescued from a demon attack by Adrian, a leather-coated, sword-toting warrior. He reveals that he is one of the Immortals, created at the dawn of civilization to protect humanity from Death Magic.
Together they discover that the demon is an Old One, determined to drain life from the world, and he’s convinced Tain, the youngest Immortal, to turn on his brothers and help him. The only way to stop them is to gather the remaining Immortals in one place–but the spell to do it has been lost, and the Immortals no longer want to play nice…
You can read an excerpt here.
