The Iron Hunt (2008) by Marjorie M. Liu is the first in a new series featuring demon hunter, Maxine Kiss. By day she has demonic spirits living on her body, making her immortal by providing their bodies for her armor and at night, they awake and peel away from her skin to be her bodyguards against her supernatural enemies.
Maxine Kiss is by nature, a loner. A woman without family or roots. A woman trying to outrun her future. However, Maxine does decide to settle down in Seattle, with an ex-priest and man of faith, Grant Cooperon. He’s a flute-player who can see people’s auras and has the ability to change them into something good. He runs a homeless shelter where demons have inhabited the bodies of many of the residents. He experiments with them, using his flute-playing to change their souls.
Moving on. As the last line of women Wardens who were sent to protect mankind from the demons who have escaped the prison veil, Maxine is the last one of her kind. Her mother died when she was twenty-one. The story includes quite a few scattered scenes of Maxine’s mother and her life before she died. Maxine is well aware of her destiny. She knows that one day, she must pass down “the boys” as she refers to them, to her future generation one day. When that happens, an order for her death will be rendered and like her mother before her, she will die by the hand of her enemies.
The story starts off with the murder of a private investigator who was searching for someone who wasn’t supposed to be publicly known to anyone. At least that is what Maxine Kiss thought until she is questioned by the cops about her connection to the recently deceased private eye. She denies knowing him and decides to do a little detecting of her own to find out why he was searching for her. She is eventually led to an elderly gentleman, an anthropologist, who seems to have an interest in many disciplines and seems to have many secrets. The rest of the plot is somewhat hard to summarize but it involves real life folklore and myth, a bit of time-travel and the threat of the apocalypse at the hands of the supernatural.
I have absolute respect for an author who thinks outside the box but there are criticisms worth noting and discussing about The Iron Hunt. Let’s start with the narrative voice: it just didn’t flow well for me. Too many abrupt sentences and comma splices. True, I had experienced that writing style in the anthology but it wasn’t as bad (I thought) as it was in here. Second problem is the plot: too complicated, overblown, convoluted, complex, repetitive and ambiguous. Lastly, the characters failed to live up to their stated potentials. Maxine and her “boys” get shot at, ran over and sucker punched. For the armor that she has, it wasn’t very impressive. All the “boys” ever really did was eat inanimate objects and sing along to rock tunes while they remained idle for most of the book.
The bad guys, while entrenched in a convoluted plot that ran in circles, they managed to eek out some scary moments. Especially, Oturu, a demon made up of flesh and blood with feet made of knives who danced when he delivered a killing blow. No doubt this author has a vivid imagination with an interesting premise but I think it was poorly executed. The Iron Hunt was a disappointing read. There were a handful of scenes that were interesting but overall the book tanked for me. There is much about this plot that I have not discussed and will leave for you to discover on your own if you choose to read this book.
Honestly, after reading the anthology (that I hope you have read), I got what I expected. I was just hoping that Ms. Liu would surprise me with her different and unique story but she didn’t. As for the romance, I almost didn’t mention it because guess what? There really wasn’t much of one in here. Most of the romantic plot was wrapped up in the anthology so no sex, no romance, no chemistry and I still don’t much like the hero. My grade for The Iron Hunt is a D. Read at your own risk.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Sarai — sorry so late to respond. I didn’t have an Internet connection for three days. YES, reading the anthology will help A LOT. I find it quite frustrating that she didn’t introduce nor bother to explain anything in The Iron Hunt.
I plan to read it after I finish the short story (in Wild Things) I heard that reading it first helps explain the rest of this story any thoughts on it? I will let ya know when I post my review.
Yes, there is a Sarah in the book, she was somewhat of a b* but eventually she came around. Now as to her fate — my lips are sealed.
This book seems to be getting mixed reviews. I say read it for yourself but do realize that she doesn’t explain very much which made The Iron Hunt such a frustrating read for me. Also, Maxine was kept in the dark way too much and while the “boys” do seem to be idle for most of the book, when they are in action, well, let’s just say I wasn’t all that impressed. I hope you all have better luck with it. I wish someone who did enjoy it would drop a comment and give a different take.
I have to read it someone said she put my name in there and I’m sure it was totally b/c she knew me right? (watch it’s probably the first person who dies or a total b*tch)
Thanks for this in-depth review. Sometimes Amazon just doesn’t cut the mustard.
Ugh, I have this in my TBR pile… I read the last sentence and was meh… What to do now… to read or not to read? Great review Keishon
For some reason my last comment didn’t work. Anyway about the review: Aw man! I read the story in the anthology and liked it, so I was looking forward to the book, but I was a little worried because I wasn’t that into the only book of hers I’d read (but it was her first book so I was going to try again). Plus Iron Hunt is supposedly more urban fantasy than romance. Now I don’t know if I want to get this or not..
Ack! Oh nooooooo! I haven’t read this yet. It’s not looking good. I read the excerpt for it and it is a very good example of the choppy writing style. That normally wouldn’t bother me is the story is good.