The Hunters by David Wragg
I would like to thank the author and Harper Voyager for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher - Harper Voyager
Published – Out Now
Price - £9.99 paperback £5.99 Kindle eBook
She’s on the run. They’re out to kill. But what happens when you catch a hunter?
Ree is a woman with a violent past – a past she thought she’d left behind. After years of wandering, she and her niece Javani have finally built a small life for themselves at the edge of the known world.
But sometimes the past refuses to stay there, and Ree’s is about to catch up with her. This time, there will be blood.
For the land is in turmoil and professional killers have arrived in their town looking for an older woman and child, setting off a desperate chase through deserts, mountains, and mines. Ree will have to discover her former self if she is to keep them both alive.
One of the joys of fantasy is how characters of many different personalities, abilities and often different races meet and interact. Some become like family, others will become mortal enemies, and all usually find their lives changed forever. There is a great spin on this in David Wragg’s The Hunters is a fantasy novel where a variety of unusual characters intersect with one another in a small mining time and creates an epic chase for survival with many surprises on the way.
Ree keeps herself to herself just her and her niece Javani on a small remote mining town on the mountains far from the sea. But hearing that a caravan appears to be asking for her sets in train very quickly a violent chain of events. Ree and Javani are soon to meet the thief Movos Guvuli, a giant violent bounty hunter from the mysterious Horvauns, the mischievous Aki and Anashe siblings with their own agendas and the genteel and ever honourable Lazant. All these people have agendas for which Rees and Javani will become key parts of and blood, violence and death will erupt as will many long-held secrets.
I was really impressed by this story which combines a fantasy world with the feeling of a western working really well with the small remote town setting where all hell is about to be released. It is also a real pain to review as the less you know coming in the better! What for me works is that Wragg has a cast full of characters who have hidden facets not immediately obvious to us when we meet them. At the heart of it all are the tough as nails Ree who clearly has a past and knows how to fight but is keeping that very much hidden from view. Javani is bright and already planning a bank heist to help her follow her own dreams to escape. What they need are catalysts of all the other characters about to descend on the small town. Heroes and villains await and some of those cross those lines more readily than you’ll expect. I enjoyed the various reveals we find and the ways the relationships between the characters shift. You get invested in the ways alliances form and fracture and that helps set up the main piece of this tale an epic chase.
Wragg has a great sense of action, and the story has a variety of set pieces threaded by an immense chase across the wild landscape with added deadly storms, bandits, bounty hunters and deadly wildlife. The writing has a great sense of action and propulsion with innovative escapes and battles await – we do indeed see what Ree is capable of and again a few surprises await. It is very enjoyable to have a story where you just watch it all get primed and then race across to the end.
This story is starting a new series and I’m quite intrigued where it goes next. In the wider plot we get complex royal intrigue and tales of Gods awaiting to be reborn. The truth is murky, and my one drawback was how one character spends a little too long saying I will explain everything later again and again but even then we find more secrets lie underneath it all.
The Hunters is best described as a rapid fantasy ride of action, great characters and secrets to delve through., I love a tale being economical and dangling just enough of the wider world to keep us invested but never letting the story get lost. I am very much looking forward to reviewing the next in the series soon! Highly recommended!
