Immortals: The Calling

By Jennifer Ashley

Love Spell [Dorchester Publishing] 2007. Mass Market PB, 357 pages, $6.99. A Love Spell Paranormal Romance.

Fans of Romantic Fantasy will love this one. The scenario is fascinating. In the dim dawn of time in Egypt, Isis, a Priestess bore demi-gods by the various Gods. These four Heroes, Adrian, Tain, Hunter and Kalen, were to protect and maintain the balance between White Magic and Blood Magic. If either became ascendant the world would be unmade. Their duties were as assigned by the Goddesses and by earthly summoning. They vanquished demons and slew vampires as needed.

Seven hundred years before, Adrian and Tain were in Scotland defending a village from an Unseelie horde. The effort was successful but Tain disappeared. Adrian searched in vain but found no sign of his brother except in recurrent dreams where Tain blamed Adrian for not finding him.

The novel begins in the present day with Adrian confronting a Demon after one of his Tain dreams. The Demon is fighting Adrian but stops suddenly as if summoned, dives through a gate and Adrian hears a woman’s terrified scream as the gate closes. He cannot follow. He starts tracking the demon.

He tracks him to a Seattle warehouse where he meets the powerful White Witch, Amber, sister of she who screamed and died. Amber is about to experience her sister Susan’s fate, but Adrian intervenes and drives of the demon. Amber has been trying to find out why her sister, a White Witch, had been performing Blood Magic. Investigation proves eventually that her sister had been tracking a Blood Magic threat and had only accidentally attracted the Demon. They gather Susan’s paper and flee to Adrian’s magically fortified mansion in L.A.

Thus they embark on a quest to find Tain, destroy Susan’s killer and ultimately to confront an evil which threatens to unmake everything. For allies they have an Septimus, ancient Vampire, Serena, a werewolf neighbor of Amber’s, Ferrin, Adrian’s Cobra/Sword/Bracelet, Valerian, an ancient were-dragon and Kelly, an actress with a thing for vampires.

Naturally, this being a romance, sparks sizzle between the various couples i.e Adrian and Amber, Serena and Valerian, and Kelly and Septimus.

The story is a fun easy and enjoyable read. If you like it there will be three more of them. Recommended. – Gary Swaty