The Immortals by Jordanna Max Brodsky is a fantasy romance, and serial killer
crime story based on greek mythology. It is set in modern time Manhattan, and it follows the goddess Artemis in her new life with a new name (Selene) in the world of mortals. In Brodsky’s interpretation the gods are ‘fading’ due to lack of worship. This means that they are slowly losing their power, and starting to age. In this book a mysterious cult dating back to before ancient Greece has been brought back, and it is murdering virgin women, and Artemis, is mysteriously gaining some of her godly abilities back. The problem is, is it worth letting the people she has sworn to protect die so she can regain her power?
This is a book about an immortal goddess learning that maybe love is more important than power, and how to forgive people for past mistakes. Its main subplot is Artemis realizing that she loves the mortal man who is helping her solve the murders, which all started with his ex being killed. This is a quit exhausting plot point, its nothing new, strong female lead believes she can’t fall in love because it’s weak, or maybe it’s because she’ll put him in danger. Its all been done before, and there is nothing special about it this time, it was boring once and it is boring again.
There is also the whole, immortal has been around for a couple million years but still hasn’t figured out things most humans have by fifteen. As well as being a virgin is what keeps her divine, she is annoyingly portrayed as really old, but acts really young, and rather that has no interest in romance, she is scared of it and wants to throw-up every time its mentioned. Stories like this have been told and retold over and over, it was boring the first time, why are you still trying? There were also some gods that weren’t fading because people still worship there aspects, like the god of wine, but the goddess of motherhood and children dies??? But there are children, and mothers, like everywhere, that just makes no sense. The murder mystery part is really only a mystery if you don’t have a brain, or if you are Artemis, the still brainless after 10 thousand years of life. Artemis’s love interest, Theo, wasn’t much better, also just a whole bunch stereotypes lumped together to make a character. Most, if not all of the characters where like this, the only Latina character effectively hits every stereotype for that ethnicity. Bravo! The only half way decent character was Hippo, the dog. I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone. I’m not that cruel.