Hey Robert,

So I got this as an audiobook from the library and listened on the Overdrive app. 8.5 hours later I know how you feel about this book.

Beware spoilers ahead!

Title: Hunter
Series: Hunter #1
Author: Mercedes Lackey
Genre: Fantasy, Sci-fi, Dystopian
Audience: Teen
ROTS Setting: Alternate Future
Synopsis: Girl has magic powers and loyal demon followers, easily defeating enemies and challenges while tired and having feelings.
Recommendation: Honestly I am not THAT disappointed.It feels very much like the Divergent Series. It is a Dystopian (the only other one that I’ve read)

It is a Dystopian which is cool but probably a quarter of the book is Joy talking about regular things but like she is from Mars and has never heard of them nor can she pronounce them. ( I don’t know how oddly they may have been spelled to the voice actor to so badly pronounce them.)

The other 15% of the book is her talking about her “masters” who trained her at the monastery. How different it is being in APEX rather than on “the mountain?” How much does she know? Basically, it is explained in such a way that makes her seem like a real bad ass and a know it all.

The next 15% is about her being a girl and a person. Lots of insecurities and worrying. Boy problems, although all the groundwork has been laid for a love triangle Knight is firmly in the friend zone and Psymon has issues. I don’t really like person problems and all that. I found it annoying in Divergent as well. Actually, this very well might be a girl book because it doesn’t play out like dude books I’ve read. This feels like Divergent/Twilight kind of book.

All the rest (45%) of the book is her totally overcoming every obstacle with just a little bit too much ease. She doesn’t get any stronger through the course of the book. But she starts off as strong as an Elite who are a very small group of hunters who can kill anything. Including but not limited to dragons described as being like 80+ ft tall.  Excluding her pack of hounds of which she starts with 7 an unusually high number each of which are also overpowered. But the biggest power growth she has over the book is adding another 4 hounds to her pack. An unheard of practice but also placing her power level over 9000!

For such an experienced author as Mercedes Lackey, I am surprised that she has basically made a fan girl avatar much more akin to a video game character (although Lackey has written for video games) than a real person. Joy is the biggest problem with this book. Every challenge is taken as a matter of fact, and there seems to be no real struggle through the entire book. This might be by design, planning on having super epic enemies in the next couple of books that only Joy can save them from. I am of the opinion that, “If the first one isn’t good, there won’t be any later books.”(Advice given to Robert Jordan by his wife while writing the first book in the Wheel of Time series.)

Now that I’ve said all that. I think this is a great book for the right person. Honestly, as angsty and immature as you are Robert, you are not the right person for this book. If you were like 13-15 year old and really into dystopians then this would be a really cool way of looking at them. I like the setting and the magic system is also really cool. So I would recommend this book, but with exceptions. Let me know if you guys want me to review the next book, Elite. The library has it too as an audiobook and I could listen to it pretty easy while driving (how I get most of my reading done).

Jared

Links

• Mercedes Lackey Official Website
• Robert’s Review of Hunter