The Great Hunt
Author: Wendy Higgins
Genre: YA/Fantasy
Grade: B
A lot of the time when reading a book like this I get the feeling the young characters are confusing lust with true love. That was strong in this one. I mean their bodies were responding pretty much from the first minute yet I just wanted to say, “You guys sleep together yes, but true love and marriage…
I just don’t know about that.”
A horrible beast is killing the men of the Kingdom of Lochlanach. Seemingly unstoppable the King decides to stage a hunt and offer the hand of his eldest child and heir Princess Aerity. Local brothers Paxton and Tiern are among the many to throw their hand into the ring though Paxton is not the least bit interested in marrying the girl.
I feel like my problems with this story are somewhat nitpicking so I’ll start with the good. The story itself has a lot of potential I liked the way the hunters and the hunt is set up. The author does a good job of giving some life to the men (and a wonderful tribe of women hunters) and does a good job of weaving in the history of the Kingdom and the other Kingdoms that are playing a big part in this. All the while keeping the action on the hunts frightening and tense.
So yes, important parts good. Potential.
So what bugged me?
Well Aerity herself never really took off for me. Nor did her family (specifically her younger sister and her grieving cousin). It really is another romance that starts off with the guy being a jerk and the girl being like, “Oh, he’s interesting. I’m so drawn to him!” That gets better as the story goes along but still. Though I did like that not all the participants were wildly in love with Aerity.
I was still going back and forth with her by the end as well. She’s really fairly careless which in some sense made her more human but then the end… I don’t want to give away spoilers but honestly so much of it felt so obvious! The poor redshirt guard who had to protect her! Plus there’s this thing with her sister if that isn’t set up for the plot in the next book I’ll almost be disappointed!
There’s a lot of interesting good characters here but I just felt like with the writing they were falling back into the read it, been there, done it category. I actually wanted better for Pax, Tiern and the other hunters.
Recommend: Wait to be completed. I won’t like unlike some I’m intrigued enough by the secondary characters and the little moments to keep reading. But this one that could go either way. Pull off a good ending and I could see all my problems with the first book disappearing and really loving the whole thing. Yet I can also see far too many ways that doesn’t happen. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.