Book Review: Hunter by Mercedes Lackey

Happy New Years TBF Readers! I don't know about you but I was able to get a lot of reading done over the winter break. I finished a new fantasy/sci-fi book by Mercedes Lackey called Hunter and it was amazing! Where to start...

Hunter is an intriguing read, one that I particularly enjoyed because Lackey pulled off the combination of fantasy and science fiction in one book! Now how is this possible? 

Joyeaux (Joy) Charmand lives in the former United States after the destruction wreaked by the Diseray, the event that broke the barriers between out world and the Otherworld. Creatures straight out of mythology escaped into our world, forcing the human population into closed shelter in cities across the country. Only Hunters (those born with the ability to summon and control Otherworld creatures) can keep these monsters at bay, and Joy is one of them. But Hunters must work to protect the Apex, the largest city left, to protect the vast majority of the population. Joy is from a close-knit mountain community that secretly keeps every Hunter born there to protect themselves. But when the Apex discovers that Joy is a Hunter, she is forced to leave or the Apex may come to forcibly collect her and discover all the other Hunters on the mountain.

So Joy is whisked off to the Apex to train as a Hunter there, and she finds the Apex to have some stark differences from the mountain. The tech, the attention, and the way of life are largely alien to Joy, as the limit of her knowledge of the Apex comes from a TV that the mountain community keep on only when they watch the news. But it's not just the culture that keeps Joy on her toes. The Apex attracts a much larger number of the Otherworld monsters, as they attack areas with larger populations of humans. Within two days she completes two difficult Hunts. But even for the Apex, this is an unusual number of attacks from Othersiders. What's causing it?

Lackey does a phenomenal job with this genre twister. She has a tremendous amount of experience in writing and it shows. It's got the post-apocalyptic feel with all the depth and detail of high fantasy, so I would highly recommend it for anyone interested in either of these genres. It's the start of the series and I am so excited to keep reading! 

I hope readers enjoy it as well! Happy reading!

~Meg