REVIEW: Wild Thing Anthology, Hunter Kiss by Marjorie M. Liu

Wild Thing (2007) is the anthol­ogy that first intro­duces Max­ine Kiss, the new hero­ine the author is fea­tur­ing in her new book, The Iron Hunt. The anthol­ogy also fea­tures sto­ries from Mag­gie Shayne (who head­lines this book along with Liu) and authors to watch out for: Mel­jean Brook and Alyssa Day. This review will focus only on Mar­jorie M. Liu’s novella, “Hunter Kiss.”

The main rea­son why I picked up this anthol­ogy is because of the recent release of The Iron Hunt (2008), the first in a new series. As I was read­ing The Iron Hunt, I found myself thrust straight into the story and its char­ac­ters with­out much intro­duc­tion. This pro­vided for a con­fus­ing start so I put it down. I decided to back­track and start at the begin­ning. Some poten­tial read­ers may not do that much but I am inter­ested in read­ing this series because it fea­tures an unusual hero­ine and has a inter­est­ing premise and I am always look­ing for some­thing dif­fer­ent.

In “Hunter Kiss”, the author intro­duces us to female demon hunter Max­ine Kiss. Max­ine is not human. I don’t know what she is really. How­ever, dur­ing the day, demons are wrapped around her entire body like tat­toos from head to toe. At night, they peel away from her skin, thereby mak­ing her human and vul­ner­a­ble. The “boys” as she refers to them are her armor and are passed down the line from mother to daugh­ter. It is a cen­turies old tra­di­tion with the women in her fam­ily. Max­ine must ensure the sur­vival of her “boys” by pass­ing them along to her daugh­ter one day. It is a death sen­tence for her when that hap­pens because once her armor of pro­tec­tion is no longer there, she becomes a tar­get of the demons she hunts. It is what hap­pened to her mother and what will hap­pen to her one day, too.

This is a rather bizarre premise but you must hand it to Ms. Liu for branch­ing out fur­ther than the usual para­nor­mal story. If you have plans to read The Iron Hunt then this novella is almost a neces­sity unless you’re one of those read­ers who can wait patiently for the author to finally explain things. I am not one of those read­ers. Mov­ing on. As for the world build­ing, here is my under­stand­ing of it. There are cer­tain bar­ri­ers or “pris­ons” in this world that keep demons out. How­ever, there have been cracks made into this “bar­rier” that allows demons to come through, mak­ing the “prison veil” weak. Max­ine Kiss is the only hunter of her kind who kills demons. She is the one and only thing that stands between demons and their human hosts.

But what about the demons that are with Max­ine? What makes them so dif­fer­ent? Well, since they’ve been passed down from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion, she con­sid­ers them “fam­ily.” After all, they pro­tect her and make her invin­ci­ble. The only one who really has any dia­logue is Zee and he mostly speaks in rid­dles. The oth­ers just lurk or melt into the shad­ows. There are other ele­ments to this world that the author intro­duces but I will let you dis­cover them on your own.

Hunter Kiss starts off quickly but its job is more or less an intro­duc­tory set-up into this unusual world and hints at what is to come in the next book. A quick run down of the plot: Max­ine runs into a flute player in Seat­tle and saves his life. Demons or as she refers to them, “zom­bies” have made him a tar­get. Grant Cooperon is a ex-man of the cloth, a man of faith, who walks with a cane. He uses his flute play­ing to change the auras of bad peo­ple or demons into some­thing “dif­fer­ent than what they were meant to be.” Angelic demons? There is a “demon queen” who they refer to as “Blood Mama” (snicker) who has some power over demons beyond the prison veil. How­ever, there’s a war com­ing. A demon much worse than any­one has ever seen before. The threat of this “com­ing war” has me inter­ested. So, score. She has hooked me and I will be read­ing The Iron Hunt next.

I know this is long so I will wrap it up say­ing that this novella felt rushed but that can’t be helped since this is only a short story. Sec­ond, the romance, I’m not sure I am on board with that. The hero is not very appeal­ing to me and that has noth­ing to do with his being hand­i­capped. The romance was rushed and the con­nec­tion the two felt for each other felt con­trived. What I enjoyed more was this pecu­liar world this author has cre­ated so I’d say if you’re inter­ested in read­ing Mar­jorie M. Liu’s lat­est and newest series, I’d locate a used copy or a library copy of this anthol­ogy first to give you a taste of this new world she has cre­ated. My grade, C.

For Fur­ther Reading

• REVIEW: The Iron Hunt by Mar­jorie M. Liu