Title: Hunter
Author: Mercedes Lackey
Format: Hardback
Year Published: 2015
I’m on record for how much I like Mercedes Lackey (generally). Hunter is no exception to this rule, though it definitely falls into the category of brain candy. Which was fine, since I was reading it on the beach – a good beach read.
Hunter is the story of a world where the barriers between our world and the Otherworld were ripped open, and civilization is only now starting to recover. One of the reasons for this recovery is the Hunters, people who are gifted with magic and the ability to fight the creatures that come through from the Otherworld.
Joyeaux Charmand has been training to be a Hunter since she was very young, but now has been taken from her small, tight-knit community to the big city. The Apex is the hub of civilization, where Hunters are supposed to come and be trained, and, as Joy soon discovers, where they are also celebrities and reality stars.
Determined to make her mentors and uncle proud and to protect the Cits of this new world she’s in, Joy throws herself into the fight. But it’s not as straightforward as it seems, for she has enemies she doesn’t expect, and when an attack against her goes awry, she finds herself in a fight that she isn’t sure she can win, and where not-winning means death.
I enjoyed Hunter, though, as I said, it’s brain candy. It’s written in first-person (I know! Shock!), but I was able to push past that. I will say, despite the fact that Lackey’s best writing skill is character creation, I found Joy to relatively unflawed, and not flawed with things that really affect her or other people. She is very advanced (though she is aware she must hide how she becomes so advanced), and yet this never seems to make other people suspicious (though she should be a novice at the start, despite being trained for “six months”).
Instead of connecting strongly with Joy, I connected strongest with her trainers/mentors, and with her uncle (though he gets relatively little screen time). And though I am not necessarily anti-romance, I did not feel that the romance between Joy and Josh was necessary and did, in some ways, detract a bit from the main plot. I adored all of Joy’s Hounds, supernatural creatures that come from the Otherworld to help her fight, and I loved the bits we get about Joy’s life before coming to the City, and about the training she went through there.
Over all, though, I enjoyed the book and look forward to reading Elite in September. 3.5/5 stars.
Objects in Motion 