The Immortals: The Power We Wish For, and the Strength We Already Have

I just finished reading The Immortals, by Jordanna Max Brodsky, which is the story of Selene DiSilva, a tough-as-nails private investigator in New York City who investigates a string of murders caused by a mysterious cult exhuming Ancient Greek religious practices and adapting them for the present day.  Naturally, the book also addresses Selene's love life--just for an interesting literary twist, it has stagnated as she focuses on the demands of her life-and-death career--along with the pit of uneasiness in her stomach as she confronts her newly-appeared crows' feet and her perpetually-diminishing physical capability.

Also, she has a secret identity.  Selene DiSliva is actually the Ancient Greek goddess Artemis.  Just your standard everyday girl, right?

I've read a healthy sampling of urban fantasies with female leads, plus a pretty broad selection from the unfortunately-named chick lit genre, and I'm on familiar terms with our standard heroine.  Divine immortality and superpowers aside, all of these women share the same basic DNA, at least when it comes to those genes responsible for personality.  Each one is plucky, smart, and physically tough enough to compete with the boys.  She is an outsider in the established society of her own literary universe, almost never to be found in the comforts of a functional relationship, and typically so focused on her own professional and personal struggles that she accepts her loneliness as a small price to pay for the significant rewards that come from helping those in need.  

Just as our heroine is familiar, she is also likable.  As in any story, it is a character's flaws who make her relatable and interesting for the similarly-flawed readers who come to learn from and live vicariously through her exploits.  It is easy to see the author's self-consciousness in her heroine's vulnerabilities and daydreams in her character's powers.  The readers who are drawn to these books find, or believe they have found, kindred spirits not only in the characters but in the authors themselves.  We imagine we could be these heroines, using our immortal magical powers or our supernatural talents or our uncanny senses of style and humor.  But if that doesn't work out, many of us imagine we could be their authors.  We could find a way to give voice to the dreams and fears that rattle around in our own hearts, letting them live on the page or the screen.

We know why these characteristics are so appealing, but why are they so universal as to transcend multiple literary genres, not to mention the countless tv shows and occasional movie that illuminate the flawed yet talented leading lady?  We all wish we could be more like them, of course, and we all secretly believe that maybe we already fit that heroic mold, even if our bosses or our husbands or our parents or everyone else fails to recognize it.  Some of those daydreams are probably inevitable, an instinctive response to the pressures of life and family in our contemporary world that are equally true for men, women, married, single, or any of a hundred other demographic labels.  We all want more power, more control, over the messy, beautiful, dissatisfying world in which we live.  

But why do so many female characters in particular fall into this model, and why are so many of these characters set in some variation of fantasy?  The fact that reality still doesn't measure up surely has something to do with it.  The only way we can truly have it all is to have some sort of magical power or bottomless bank account.  In the meantime, many--most?--of us are still waiting to uncover the rest of the formula for our dreams to come true.  We built our careers or our families, but rarely both--and if it is both, we probably don't have time to be reading in the first place--but after years or decades focused on one side of the equation, exploring the other half requires us to flex muscles that have atrophied through years of non-use.  We are waiting for our own deus ex machina to swoop in from off stage and pull open the curtains, revealing the strengths and the opportunities and the future that we thought we had already sacrificed.

If any of this sounds familiar to you, you should read The Immortals.  Selene is an appealing heroine and her love interest is a professor with just the right combination of physical swagger, sarcastic humor, and bottomless intelligence.  Perhaps reading about Selene will also help you remember her, and your own experiences and longings that draw you toward her archetype, the next time that you feel yourself overwhelmed by life and wishing you had your own superpowers to break through the constraints that are making you itch all over.  If so many of us dream of being this person, of having undiscovered powers to save yourself from your current circumstances, maybe we're looking at this the wrong way.  Maybe we already have some additional tricks up our sleeves, and we don't even know it.

If we're reading, watching, or dreaming of being the fabulous, fierce heroine of our own story, that means we have the power of creativity and hope to dream of different circumstances.  We have the power of faith and love to find interior peace within during the most overwhelming of storms.  We have the power of connection and curiosity to build relationships with others so that we can pool our resources and become more powerful than we ever really believed.  We may not have the laurel wreaths and cracked statues of Ancient Greek deities, but we have our ingenuity, our resourcefulness, and our hard work.  Read The Immortals, and all the other books of its ilk, and find inspiration in their heroines.  Their power can be ours.  It's possible it might be ours already.