Alright, The Hunters. I've had a good time with Dave Wragg's books in the past, so I went in hopeful, but without much idea of what I was getting into. And you know what? What I got was a smart, funny, heartfelt story of a family trying to navigate around each other and the way they saw each other. I saw a woman with a chequered past trying to make something better, and a young woman looking for something better than that, pushing back. I saw some absolutely delightful chase scenes in a fantasy-western motif. I saw a few stark moments that felt like magic and made me go "Huh!". I got some twists and turns in the story that kept me on my toes, and I got some unpleasant villains to rail against and some delightful heroes to cheer along.
This is a good book, is what I'm saying to you here.
Perhaps the book is called The Hunters because everyone in it seems to be looking for something. The central duo are Ree and Javani. Now Javani. Javani is a smart girl, a simmering bowl of resentment of where she is now, in a mining town in the armpit of nowhere. Someone trying to make something of herself and work out what that something is, while trying to define her own identity. She's fast and thoughtful, someone always trying to put a plan together, someone pushing back against a world which seems destined to give her nothing but a provincial quiet life. And one of the main architects is the other half of that duo, her aunt, Ree. Javani is looking for identity and purpose, for parentage and truth, and working out who she wants to be. Ree. Ree knows who she is. Sometimes it seems like she wishes she didn't. Quite what's led her out into a dead-end farmstead in the middle of nowhere is something of a mystery. But you can feel the edges to Ree, the ones rounded away, a sharp blade kept sheathed, both metaphorically and physically. What Ree is looking for is that quiet life Javani rails so hard against - that life of safety, a space to let the girl come into her own. A space where Ree can perhaps walk away from the past, and what it did to her, and what she did, too. Their interactions are fierce and awkward, poignant and perilous in equal measure, and the energy of the space between them sparks with every word struck. It's a good time, this.
On the lighter side, of sorts, are the siblings, Anashe and Aki. Them? They're hunting for information, and they're hunting for history. They're looking to know about their family, about those who died, and why, and what they were like, before the two were born. And that trail has led them to a farmstead in the middle of nowhere. They have a different vibe to Ree and Javani. Aki, in particular, is an effervescent, endlessly positive delight, who assists that disposition by running a full speed motormouth, with a lexicon that would make a thesaurus blush. He's just fun to read. Anashe is the quieter, more contemplative, with a ground down patience for her brother and a vituperative tongue that she wields like a lash (mostly at Aki, which he mostly ignores). They're ruthless enough, and determined, and passionate, and trying to be better. There's a poignant undercurrent to their rare, quieter moments, as they work out what they're doing, and why.
And then, well, there's the others. Lazant and Kahlida are also hunting something. Something more, or less abstract perhaps. Power. Influence. A place of safety, security. The approval of a parent. But they're willing to wade in blood to get it, to grind their way through dust and lightning, blasting powder and blades, to grasp what they feel is theirs. Relentless, entitled, bloody and, at the core, contemptuous of these little towns and their little lives, they're a duo who you can feel festering behind golden smiles on every page where they appear.
This is a story about stories, too. About the stories we tell each other and ourselves. How Ree looks at herself. What she tells Javani about her past. What Javani tells herself about her future. What Aki and Anashe think they know and want to know about their family and why. And what the world tells itself about itself, a mining town slowly being absorbed by a guild with tentacles deep in more urban places, where they don't care about the miners, just the bottom line. Like the people, the place is a liminal space, a place on the edge of things. Straddling the wilderness and what insists on calling itself civilisation. What it's been is a place of safety, but what it might be is somewhere between a thriving town, and a desolate wasteland. I loved the way the quiet desperation of a marginal mining town was evoked, the core economic certainties behind the crossbows and charms, the gold behind the blood and steel.
And it's this blend of a vividly realised world, a world of grit and blood and love and tears, vengeance and joy, along with the strong characterisation, the tightly written, complex, human relationships, filled with simmering tensions, explosions (literal as well as metaphorical), the quiet moments, the drawn breath in the dark. That there's chases and swordfights and banter and, yes, more than one big explosion, is helpful, of course. But it's these things, these human moments that make this a book you want to read, and read again right after you're done.
Anyway. Bloody good book. Give it a whirl.
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