Following the events in Immortal, Adam (we'll call him this for simplicity's sake) finds himself in Las Vegas, the epicenter of excess and self-loathing, and the perfect place for a man to go once he's been dumped by one of the only other immortals he knows to exist. Clara, Adam's love interest from the previous book, has decided to leave him and make her way in Europe with her new-found immortality and a big pile of cash. Meanwhile, in the casinos in Vegas, Adam drowns his sorrows in his favorite form of self-torture, booze. But it's tough to do this when someone is following you in the form of a gorgeous Greek woman he eventually confronts named Ariadne. Worse yet, Ariadne tells him she isn't the only one following him and he soon becomes the prime focus of the FBI when he is suspected of financing an eco-terrorist group.
He soon is befriended by an odd FBI agent named Mike, who is acting on his own and whose true intentions are driven by the fact that his godson, Lonnie, mysteriously disappeared after entering an Amazon rainforest the year or so before with a friend, Peter. Mike helps Adam elude the FBI in the hopes that he can shed some light on what happened to Lonnie and Adam will have to travel to Greece to get his answers.
For Adam, returning to Greece after hundreds of years is a culture shock, to be sure, only made worse by the fact that he realizes he must locate any remaining Greek satyrs who essentially guard a centuries-old religious ceremony that could be the key to it all. Basically, everyone Adam encounters has their own secret agenda and it's going to take everything in his age-old repertoire to survive this mess, especially since an old hippie girlfriend, who also happens to be an oracle, has prophesied some bad stuff on the horizon for Adam. Let's not forget Adam's obsession: the mysterious red-headed beauty he seeks, who is definitely central to the plot, but not even mentioned until halfway through the book. Never fear - a little more light is shed upon the peculiar relationship between she and Adam.
Although Hellenic Immortal is told in a slightly different way than Immortal, I still absolutely loved it. This time, instead of telling his story a bit backwards, filled with tales from his very long life, each chapter begins with a passage that has been translated from ancient Greek scrolls of conversations between a man named Silenus and the god Dionysus. While the crux of the texts won't be fully understood until the end of the book, it's a clever way to deliver bits and pieces of the puzzle to the reader.
Once again, Gene Doucette delivers an engaging, thrilling novel with interesting and fantastical characters guaranteed to keep you latched onto this book from start to finish. If you enjoyed Immortal, you'll also love Hellenic Immortal, and if you haven't read Immortal yet, shame on you. Go get it immediately. I think Gene Doucette just might be my new favorite writer. Highly recommended.
