Review: Hunter's season
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 22, 2013
This is a short novel about the Elder Races, one of a series which carries characters forward. The land of Adriyel has been magically linked with America, and through various gates the Elder folk can cross over into Chicago or Nevada, bringing goods to and fro for trade.Xanthe, a former assassin and now palace guard to the Dark Fae queen, has just returned from an assignment in America; we hear too much about this for a standalone, but enough if read after that book. She reports back to the head of security at the palace and retires to rest at her small cottage, which she hasn't lived in for a year. However she is soon back to her formal palace duties. Civil unrest and lawsuits have characterised the land for some time. One night an assassination attempt is carried out on the Chancellor Aubrey, a man Xanthe greatly admires. Xanthe secretly whisks him away to her secluded woodland cottage for protection and only a few trusted persons know where he is while he is recovering.A magical Tarot deck from the previous instalment has shown Xanthe that she will find love, but she had thought it was the love of a kitten she rescued. However the kitten turns out to be a shapechanged little girl, who is unfortunately taken back to her home. Could the assassin be destined to find love with the high-status man lying injured in her bed?I enjoyed this short fantasy and the details were finely wrought: the cream is stored in a basket down the well, the ginger kitten was a believable little mouser and the woodlands and palace are carefully described. For someone unfamiliar with the rest of the series, I thought there are too many discussions about legal cases and allusions to magic gates that we don't see. On the other hand, this relatively gentle tale is an encouragement to read the earlier instalments, which are partly set in America, a crossover between high fantasy and urban fantasy.