APRIL 3, 2013

Soul Meaning, A.D. Starrling’s debut novel, launches a high-octane paranormal thriller. The protagonist is immortal, Lucas Soul, the offspring of two warring immortal races, the Bastians and the Crovirs. who have spent the last several centuries in an uneasy truce. Immortality, however comes with caveats. Lucas is only immortal until his seventeenth death and he does tend to attract trouble–the type of trouble that carries guns and a grudge.

Together with his human chain-smoking partner, Reid, Lucas must figure out why he is hunted, preferably before he dies for the seventeenth time…

I loved this novel. Let me count the ways…

1. It involves biology. Biology major and closet science geek that I am, I adore novels that involve the boundaries of what we know and understand about science, most especially biology. However, for the people who don’t speak Biology-ese, rest assured, Starrling has a gentle touch and you won’t even notice that you’ve been hit with science…

2. It successfully dances along the fine line of managing backstory and leading you along while peeling back the layers of the onion. A fair chunk of context is offered up in the first 5-10% of the novel, and the rest, you discover along the way, together with Lucas Soul as he digs into the ever deepening mystery of why the Bastians and Crovirs are reigniting their feud.

3. Lucas is awesome, and to be clear, I rarely offer this compliment to protagonists. Yes, he is fantastically accomplished and rich to boot (and while some people might roll their eyes at so “perfect” a person, let’s clarify that he’s had several hundred years to get good at what he does, so “near-perfection” is theoretically possible.) What I loved most about him, however, is his quiet, wry humor and attitude. It made him seem down to earth and easy to relate with (his immortality notwithstanding.) He really is the kind of guy I’d like to hang out with; low key and (seemingly) easy going with an undercurrent of pure steel.

I’ll confess to skipping through the detailed car chase scenes and even some of the fight scenes. I found some of them a little drawn out; I was looking for the REAL action (which for me usually involves finding out something as opposed to shooting something), but all in all, the book was outstanding–a page-turner, literally.

Looking forward to the next book in the series.