Hellentic Immortal by Gene Doucette

Title: Hellenic Immortal
Author: Gene Doucette
Publishing Date: May 3, 2012
Source: Publisher
Summary (from Goodreads):

 “Very occasionally, I will pop up in the historical record. Most of the time I’m not at all easy to spot, because most of the time I’m just a guy who does a thing and then disappears again into the background behind someone-or-other who’s busy doing something much more important. But there are a couple of rare occasions when I get a starring role.”

--Adam the Immortal

An oracle has predicted the sojourner’s end, which is a problem for Adam insofar as he has never encountered an oracular prediction that didn’t come true . . . and he is the sojourner. To survive, he’s going to have to figure out what a beautiful ex-government analyst, an eco-terrorist, a rogue FBI agent, and the world’s oldest religious cult all want with him, and fast.

And all he wanted when he came to Vegas was to forget about a girl. And maybe have a drink or two.

“I am probably not the best source when it comes to who invented what. For a long time I thought I invented the wheel.”

--Adam the Immortal

The second book in the Immortal series, Hellenic Immortal follows the continuing adventures of Adam, a sixty-thousand-year-old man with a wry sense of humor, a flair for storytelling, and a knack for staying alive. Hellenic Immortal is a clever blend of history, mythology, sci-fi, fantasy, adventure, mystery and romance. A little something, in other words, for every reader.

                                Review
 

I’m always a little nervous when starting the second book in a series, especially if I loved the first book. Will it live up to my expectations? What if it doesn’t? What if I find it mind numbingly boring because of a crappy plot and characters that lost the zest they had in book one? Will the author’s eagerness to publish the next installment ruin what I loved about the series to begin with?

Thankfully, I didn’t have to worry about any of that with Hellenic Immortal.

Adam’s continued journey kept me intrigued and wanting more the entire read. Maybe even more so than Immortal did. I admit I didn’t read the summary before receiving the book – that may have had something to do with me being so damn excited to read it that I really didn’t care what it was about. However, considering how Immortal ended, I expected it to be about Adam going off to find “Eve”. Or maybe even a story about Adam and Clara.

Nope. Not even close. Of course if I had read the summary I would have realized that. The story was so much more than I expected and I once again loved every single page of it. The new supernatural characters Doucette threw into the mix actually made me want to research and see just how much truth there was to the gods he wrote about. Of course I knew some of them were true, but the fact that he made me want to learn more about ancient History is… well, pretty much a miracle.

I had a thing for Mike the second he appeared in Adam’s hotel room. And the more I learned about him, the more I loved him. That also might have had something to do with the mystery behind his being. And I really liked how it was revealed; how Mike didn’t seem to have a clue that he was different.

Ariadne. For a character that didn’t have a whole lot of story time, she sure made up for it towards the end. Although, because of the lack of face time she got in the novel, I found that I didn’t really have any feelings toward her one way or another. I didn’t care about her character or what happened to her even though she turned out to be a fairly important part. I didn’t dislike her, I just didn’t care.

I would have liked some returning characters, like the red-headed woman. It would have been interesting if she had somehow been tied into all that was happening, but I’m not terribly disappointed that she wasn’t part of the book – aside from the little glimpse Adam gets of her at the end.  The same can be said for Clara. Considering she’s now also an immortal I fully expected her to be  more apart of  Adam’s life, but the fact that she wasn’t didn’t really upset me either. And that’s only because Doucette made it to me by writing such fascinating new characters.