Review: Good SF... Check It Out
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 24, 2013
How would you like to be immortal? Basically, that was the offer given to teenage street kid Telly when he was rescued by a strange man named Van while being pursued by a drug dealer he'd ripped off for a few bucks.There are only four immortals in the world. No one knows exactly, but there are legends. In the ancient past, some of the Gods wanted to offer immortality to mortals. As punishment, they were condemned to live among them.There were a few rules. You can tell no one about it. You can't harm another immortal. After fifty years as an immortal, one can try to move back to Godhood.To do that, one must pick a successor and begin the training, after first exchanging blood. That sets off changes in the soon-to-be immortal. They don't need to sleep. Or eat. And therefor no bodily functions. Drugs and alcohol don't affect them.When it's time for the Ascension Rite, the old immortal is weakened and the successor is on the cusp, He must kill the master with the Amaranth Dagger, two thrusts into the heart, the only way an immortal can die.Telly begins his training and meets the other three immortals. They don't like Van and have plans of their own. You see, Van is different from the others. They all have aristocratic backgrounds, the only one born in this century traces his family line back to Julius Caesar, one of them. Van was merely a slave in his pre-immortal days.I liked this book. Author Ramsey Isler has given us a metaphor of religion disguised as an adventure novel that is quite satisfying.Would recommend this one.