"The first time I committed suicide I was ten years old.
There have been many more suicides since."
Adam is cursed. He cannot die.
But one man’s burden is another man’s blessing, and there are people who are out to harness Adam’s special talents.
However, Adam soon discovers that immortality comes at a cost; every time he dies, he loses a little bit of himself. So when Adam meets Lilyanne—his reason for living—he’s forced to choose between life and love.
As a student of philosophy with a graduate degree in theology, Mikheyev adds depth and thought-provoking passages to the story, including well-placed Bible references. Readers will enjoy the three-dimensional character of Adam, who is deemed a “romantic” from a young age. One scene finds the teenage Adam reading Schopenhauer’s Metaphysics of Love at a New York City bookstore.
Mikheyev takes readers for a spin on the darker side of immortality, portraying it as having sinister effects, attacking the body and mind, and attracting undesirable attention from opportunistic rich people desperate to grab it for themselves. The protagonist’s painful journey will resonate with readers, and readers will be hypnotized by the twists in this page-turning account of the catastrophic consequences of immortality.
Takeaway: Readers looking for a dark, philosophical take on immortality will find this sci-fi a page-turner.
Great for fans of: James Gunn’s The Immortals, Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, Matt Haig’s How to Stop Time.
Production grades
Cover: B
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A
From the troubled and tragically hopeful mind of a truly hopeless romantic comes Strange Deaths of the Last Romantic by Moses Yuriyvich Mikheyev. Simmering with dark comedy and questioning the boundaries between magic and physics, this is a crafty novel that can easily make a reader forget it’s fiction. From existential questions about reincarnation to the cutting-edge frontiers of regenerative biology, this novel is a heady dive into mortality, conspiracy, personal identity, and a fatal penchant for love. The writing is smart and confident, and though the first-person narration can get redundant, the relationships feel real, as does the mounting pain of this uniquely cursed protagonist. Gritty and patient, with authentic dialogue and a bizarre plot that has broad appeal, this is a uniquely strange novel you should not miss.
