Hello my beautiful watchers, yes, believe it or not the title of this video is not the
result of an intoxicated game of mad libs, it really is a description of this book.
Immortal Highlander is a 5 book series by Hazel Hunter, an LA based romance writer
who has an impressive 105 published books under her belt and who feels the need to mention that
she is a vegan in the bio she uploads to every online bookstore she’s featured on.
Her work usually takes the form of long running series, there's two spin off quintets of Immortal
Highlander, the Dredthorne Hall series which are gothic romance, the Hollow City Coven books,
they’re paranormal romance and Her Warlock Protector, a nine book series about….
Huh…. Alright, because I know you’re going to demand it anyway if this video gets
10,000 likes I’ll read this one too.
Now I’m not saying this is inherently a bad thing,
but just so we’re on the same page here, this is one of those occasions where the cover art
of almost every book she’s written is a stock photo of identical looking,
outrageously muscular, dehydrated men… Goodness... I really need to workout more.
My point is there's clearly a slight “not the intended audience” issue to keep in
mind here. I’m a straight male and these books are primarily written for horny women
so while I will of course try to be as fair as possible do
take my review with a pinch of salt because this was never meant for me.
Lachlan is book one in the Immortal Highlander series and summarized
to the extreme is the story of US air force Captain Kinley Chandler
inadvertently traveling through time and space to 14th century scotland
and teaming up with a clan of immortal Highlanders who are locked in a century long
war with an invading Roman legion cursed with undeath and an unquenchable thirst for blood.
She proceeds to fall in love with Lachlan, the leader of the Scotts and they have a LOT of sex.
First thing first let's get all of the Highlander jokes out of our system shall we?
I am Connor MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod. I was born in 1518 in the village of Glenfinnan on the
shores of Loch Shiel. And I am immortal. This is the QUICKENING!
There can be only one…. Grrrrr I’m the Kurgan.
Splendid, I feel much better now.
Traveling back in time to shag scottsmen is a surprisingly common event in romance these days.
You may be familiar with Outlander, the current most successful example of it.
It’s a 90s book series turned TV drama adaptation.
It's always a bit of a risk categorically claiming that something was the start of
a genre but I’m confident in saying it at least popularised it and was the largest
contributing factor in the subsequent torrent of similarly themed novels.
I have to admit, I’m not sold on it personally. It's not the Highlanders that are the problem,
big hairy, musky Scotish hunks are something we can all get behind.. Or
can get behind us *drum snare*.
Time travel though, has become a bit of a mixed bag in ANY genre as far as I’m concerned.
I mean pros you get all the excitement of setting your story in a wilder,
more epic time than our own while still retaining a fully relatable lead to act
as an audience stand in but my gods it's just SO tropey. I can’t think off the top
of my head of ANY plot device that is more troptastic than time travel.
This review is going to be spoiler light but not spoiler free. There were some parts
I really liked, other bits not so much but ultimately I think I would encourage fans of
the genre to try this series so I won’t be giving away the entire plot with a synopsis
even if I do have to spoil a few things for the sake of review. Ok, let's do this.
While Kinley and Lachlan enjoy the most POV time it's not exclusive to them as the narrative often
switches to side characters for a chapter to establish what's going on elsewhere.
Aaand unfortunately we now have to discuss the first major negative
and… Well bear with me on this its gonna sound a little rambly but trust me I do have a point.
Kinley begins her story not long after returning home from overseas deployment where she was very
severely wounded leaving her badly scarred and due to multiple amputations confined to a wheelchair.
She’s pretty much given up on life and is resisting treatment both physical and therapeutic,
prefering to die than live with her disability.
Apparently one of the helpful side effects of traveling backwards in time in this world is it
basically restores your whole body to factory settings. Any scars or missing parts are
magically put right as you pop out the other end fit, healthy full breasted and firm buttocked.
The point I suspect was to add some emotional weight to the start of the novel AND firmly
establish why she would never want to go back to the future…. but…. I know I throw the word
problematic around a lot because I’m a gorgeous SJW but we gotta go there.
There's a recurring theme in fiction writing that
I became aware of while reading a review of Detective Pikachu of all bloody things that
basically boils down to able bodied writers implying that a disabled person's life
isn't worth living unless there's a magical solution that can make them able bodied again.
Oftentimes disabled characters even end up being written as the villains because well surely they
must be willing to do whatever it takes to fix themselves, even if it means hurting other people.
A very similar theme emerged during research for the Twilight reviews. It turns out the
most common solution to fertility issues in TV dramas is “miracle pregnancy”.
The underlying message being that you are doomed to misery if you are disabled
and the only solution is to… Stop being disabled.
The best example that springs to my mind of NOT doing this is the MCU Dr Strange. There’s still
magic involved but the point is he learns that he has colossal value physical impairments and all.
So yeah I’m not trying to single Hunter out for this very common writing habit but I
didn’t care for her use of it here.
Seeing as we’re getting all the problematic stuff out early: Like the majority of romance
books I’ve covered so far there are some rather harrowing sexual assaults described in this book
so be aware of that before going in. The only thing I will say is at least in this case they
are performed by the villains and not the heroes and they are presented as horror and not romance.
There's also some pretty rough, humiliation/domination stuff but
that’s consensual and enjoyed so rock on you kinky Highlanders, no judgment there.
But yeah this is a very not safe for work book it probably has the most
sex scenes of all the romance books I’ve covered so far excluding Fifty Shades.
Tragically I can say from personal experience that it's also not safe
to download the audiobook so you can keep listening to it while you drive to starbucks
and then forget it's still playing when you wind down the window at the drive through
and have to avoid eye contact with the barista as she hands you an iced white mocha while a male
Scotish narrator describes licking the juices off a highlander’s still erect cock right after sex.
Moving onto some light hearted stuff, as much as I’m tired of time travel stories it is fun
to keep track of how much work writers are willing to put into their explanation
for said travel and honestly Lachland has now taken the lead for least fucks given.
Kinley is tipped out of her wheelchair just before she can complete a suicide
attempt and wakes up in the 14th century. She literally tripped and fell into the past.
There's a semi explanation later but that's still the jist of it and I kind of love that.
Oh and Kinley develops magical fire powers from her trip,
did I mention that? Yeah the first thing she does in the past is save
Lachlan by instinctively using them to burn a ton of vampires to death.
Ahh, yes right I should probably explain the vampires. Both the immortality of
the Highlanders and the undeadness of the Roman legion were brought about by
Celtic Druids doing some serious magic sooo… Essentially “a wizard did it”.
The vampire romans seemed to have a bit of trouble remembering that Kinley is the human torch.
Despite witnessing it first hand they failed to take it into account when “capturing” her twice.
SKETCH 1
Yes, now my little whore of Hades we shall see how much your Highlander lover really cares
about you as we use you as bait for..., BY JUPITER she’s doing the thing cheese it lads!
At last we have you right where we want you, and now I’m going to.. Err… Right, right… Well
I feel silly now.
Thoughtless ableism aside the book starts out pretty strong. I think Hunter did a
really good job with the world building. She struck a satisfying balance between
revealing too much too soon and leaving the reader confused and the information that was
revealed felt pretty natural to me, there were SOME plot dumps but they felt earned y’know?
This is a bit your results may vary but I personally found it dragged a little
in the middle, possibly coasting off that strong start a little too long.
To be fair this might be because I’m a basic bro that wasn’t that interested in the developing
romance and wanted them to just get back to impaling vampires with claymores already.
There's also a tangent in the middle centered around a brief amnesia plot and I have not yet
been able to deduce what purpose it served aside from repeating the exact same story
beats the first time these two characters got to know each other like 5 minutes ago.
Hunter sprinkled some pretty interesting historical tidbits into this, like none of the
Highlanders even knowing what a kilt was because they didn’t come into fashion until the 16th
century, and the apparently reasonably effective method they used for brushing their teeth.
There are no less than THREE ways that the heros can heal
themselves from almost any injury in this.
One of the bonus feats of being an immortal highlander is if you
take a swim in the local loch you get restored to full HP.
If they very briefly travel forwards in time they
can go back again and hit the reset button on their bodies.
And if all else fails and they die the druids can still cast resurrect on a person at least once.
There are basically zero consequences for sustaining any kind of wound in this and
as you can imagine the tension kinda wanes a bit accordingly.
Ok so last weird thing I’m going to comment on I promise. Lachlan
has a tattoo that is the manifestation of a horny snake spirit that's sharing his body.
Apparently this is a thing his clan can opt into when they come of age
that appears to be completely disconnected to the druid magic and the time travel magic.
Lachlan tries to warn Kinley that sleeping with him is basically a threesome but she doesn't care
and part of the horny snake spirit is transferred to her like an STD, creating her own tattoo.
She doesn't get the FULL story until afterwards but apparently this is… Fine?
Oh hey we have matching tattoos now. Lass, I havta admit I was kind of
expecting a stronger reaction to ya finding out I just shot a spirit up ya hooha.
Ladies, have you ever had sex that was SO good you were willing to just go with
the flow no matter WHAT happens afterwards? Damn.
While I haven't read the other books in this series my co-writer Kate is
up to number four I believe so I’m given to understand some of the issues I mentioned,
like the pacing are improved on in later novels.
Apparently EVERY book is about a different member of this clan getting a time traveling girlfriend,
they all transmit their tattoos to them and none of them react to that like you’d expect.
Like I said at the start this wasn’t made for someone like me so ultimately it shouldn’t
really matter what I think, but for what it's worth I found this book pretty good overall.
As you can see I had some issues with it kept me
reasonably entertained despite my lack of affinity for the genre.
The world building is definitely its strongest
feature and that's something I’ve always appreciated in a book series.
If you’re even a little into time travel romance or highlander romance
you could certainly do a lot worse than Lachlan,
I’ll include a link to Hazel Hunter’s website in the video description and pinned comment.
Thank you for joining me my beautiful watchers,
remember to hit that like button if you want me to have an awkward time reading through a book that
presumably involves a lot of sex with a gentleman called Dominic,
don’t forget to comment and share to help ward off the vengeful hatred of the youtube algorithm,
check out my patreon page for things like early access to episodes, my private discord server,
older episodes that were taken off Youtube and the chance to commission your own review
or Lost in Adaptation episode, please take care of yourselves out there and I will see you soon.
I felt my boob dislodge in that one. Need to invest in some better breasts I think.
Big, harry, Scotish, muscular..muscular Scotish,
Scotish muscular..big muscles, Scottish- Scottish DICK.