AdamsexyBlackback

Working on my Moning backlist glom to supplement my recent read of the Fever series. First up, The Immortal Highlander. I blasted through 50 pages yesterday morning before work and finished the rest in the evening. Romping good times with fae and humans and lots of sexy bad-boy but not overly brooding hero. I like Adam Black. He's morally kind of ambiguous, has done a lot of mischievous and even bad stuff in his past, but he doesn't seem to have done them out of malice. More like curiousity, self-centeredness and arrogance. This book finds him dumped in the 21st century without his fae powers, turned into a human by the queen of the Fae for pushing her buttons one too many times. Oh and he's invisible to humans, so he can't interact with anyone. Anyone except a sidhe-seer, those humans who have the "gift" of seeing the Fae. What are the odds that our heroine is a sidhe-seer? Anyone, anyone?

Gabrielle was raised to fear and hate the Fae, so when she runs into Adam, she distrusts and does not want anything to do with him. Well, except for that she secretly does because HELLO, gigantic, muscled, HAWT beautiful man!!!! But no no no, he's Fae, do not want! (inner conflict, we haz it). Adam starts off wanting her because she's the only person who can see him and talk to him and he needs a conduit to help him track down a way to get in touch with the Fae queen and remove the curse. And then he's attracted to her. And then he falls for her...MINE! They spend the majority of the book doing this dance of back and forth as he tries to get her to see him for who he really is (ie. through his actions towards her not from hearsay from the big Bible of sidhe-seer lore in which he is labeled as teh ebil) and she tries to keep from liking him. AS IF!

Near the end there is some gratuitous previous series couples revisiting (oh hai Daegus and Drustan and wives and kiddies), but it allows us to get to Scotland. Och aye. And then some action involving actually evil Fae. And then the wrap-up where Adam has to choose between his immortality and true love. It's all quite nicely done, with a dollop of simmering sexual tension throughout the book culminating in a three or four day marathon of nom nom nom in a Scottish castle. Who wouldn't want that? S'rsly.

If I had to grade this book as a stand-alone, I would give it a solid B+. While it's interesting to go into it knowing more about the Fae, the queen, the druids and all that stuff, I think it would work just as well on it's own by the force of Adam's personality and the romantic chase between him and Gabrielle.

Bottom line: if you see a hot Fae prince, don't automatically run away in fear. He may be worth sticking around for.