Review: The Iron Hunt by Marjorie M. Liu

Title: The Iron Hunt
Author: Marjorie M. Liu
Series: Hunter Kiss #1
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Release Date: May 6, 2010
Publisher: Orbit
Edition: Paperback
Blurb:

During the day, Maxine’s tattoos are her armour and she is invincible. At night they peel from her skin to take on forms of their own, leaving her human and vulnerable, and revealing themselves to be demons sleeping beneath her skin. But these demons are the best friends and bodyguards a woman could have. And Maxine needs bodyguards. She is the last in a line of women with power in their blood, trained to keep the world safe from malignant beings who would do us harm.

But ten thousand years after its creation, the prison dimension that kept the worst of these from us is failing, and all the Wardens save Maxine are dead. She must bear the burden of her bloodline and join the last wild hunt against the enemy.

This is the first book of the new series Hunter Kiss in which we have Maxine, the last warrior of her kind, trying to stop the demons from destroying the planet. The world in which the story is set is nothing new to the genre, but Maxine does have some unique characteristics. She has been taugh since childhood to be independent and to not have any long term relationships of any kind but she's lonely and gets tired of following the rules, so she settles in Seattle.

One of the problems I had with the book was that most of the characters where already established, so I didn't really feel a connection with them and I didn't care for them as much as Maxine (especially for Grant). And then there were other characters of which we didn't know anything at all, like Sarai, Jack & Tracker, which was really frustrating.

I loved the idea of the "living tattoos" that make Maxine untouchable at day and then at night they come to life as "her boys", little demons that defend her to the death. They were really cute and funny and at the same time absolutely lethal.
Another think that frustrated me was that it was obvious that there were a lot of kinds of demons, but Maxine didn't really care about that, so that means the reader doesn't get the information either, and not being able to tell which one was which one drove me nuts.

While this book was interesting and in some ways had fresh ideas, sometimes it didn't really go anywhere and even though it has great characters and at the end we do get some sort of closure, I was expecting more from the book, especially more action. I'll have to read the second book to get some sort of final conclusion.


Memorable Lines:

Rex stared at me like I was viler than a splat of diarrhea. ‘You just don’t care, period. You’re still looking for an excuse to kill me, Hunter.’

‘I don’t need an excuse.’ I tugged sharply on my gloves. Mary stared, but I no longer cared if she saw my tattoos.
Rex, despite his bravado, stepped back.


Next Books:
2. Darkness Calls
3. A Wild Light


Rating:


* I received this book from the publisher for review.