Sunday, March 02, 2008

Title: Immortal

Author: Traci L. Slatton

Publisher: Bantam Dell

ISBN: 978-0-385-33974-2

Genre: Fiction / Religion / Inquisition

Presentation: Paperback

Immortal is the story of Luca Bastardo, who was lost as a baby by his parents and
grew up as a street urchin on the roads of Florence. Luca is not any ordinary human,
he belongs to a special race of beings, who have very long lives and thus look young. They are thus mistaken to practice witchcraft etc. and are subjected to inquisition, burning at stake etc.

Luca undergoes a number of experiences, most of them bad but some good in his nearly
200 years of life (though he looks like about 30 years when he is burnt at the stake). He meets many artists and painters, alchemists etc., including the famous Leonardo da Vinci. The history of Florence in the years 1300 to 1400 AD is interwoven in Luca's story.

I am not an expert on Italian history, architecture, art etc. and cannot thus judge
the accuracy of what is presented here by the author. To a query from my end, the author confirmed that she has taken a lot of trouble to make the historical aspects of that period as accurate as possible. However, the story is sufficiently appealing and the style sufficiently smooth to keep me reading the fairly big book and we don't need to be experts on Italian history or art to appreciate the book.

Some of the events described are rather adult oriented and thus the book is not
suitable for children and also if you are squeamish (some scenes are rather violent).

Check out the excerpts from the book at www.amazon.com and also through Google
Excerpts.

I cannot comment on the editing and printing because what I got is an ARC (Advance
Reading Copy), not the final print edition. I would suggest that you check the book
at a physical book store and decide about buying. I am reasonably confident that you
would find the book interesting.

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