Review: One of my new favorites
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 06 19, 2012
Today I finished Final Hour of the Hunter by Bonnie Bernard. This is the third book of The Midnight Hunter Trilogy. Like the first two, I was drawn in almost immediately.We start out with Donna living a somewhat normal existence for the next two years after the battle from the last book. However, it was pretty short-lived from where we pick up the story. One day, on the way to the grocery store, she accidentally runs over/through Ursula, the goddess of chaos. Naturally, the goddess was a bit ticked off, and left Donna with a threat to end her world as she knows it. In typical Donna fashion, she avoids telling her husband, Hunter, about it. She simply wanted the peace she had been enjoying for the last couple of years to stick around a while longer.Soon, we meet up with Cassie, the Prophecy Holder. She has continued with her job of translating the Underworld Prophecy that had been left by the gods. We soon learn that she is pregnant with Howie's twins, which makes them a vampire/demon/human hybrid. Similarly to Donna's daughter Lucinda, we later learn that these twins have their own place in the prophecy.Before long, the goddess of chaos begins to fulfill her promise, with the help of The Trickster, and people close to Donna start to go missing. Donna, Hunter, and their vampire/demon/human family set out to defeat the goddess, and bring their loved ones back. Naturally, they run across several obstacles along the way, including a few that really just had me stunned into speechlessness, which is an incredibly rare occurrence for me.As I said in both of my previous reviews for Bonnie Bernard, she knows her characters. She paints amazingly colorful and entertaining characters that really make this book (and the entire series) stand out. This is definitely something that consistently stands out for her, and something I admire about her.This story is incredibly fast-paced and draws you in from the beginning. It seems something was always happening. Although, Howie is certainly not one to allow room for any boredom. ;-)One of the things I loved most about this series as a whole was the reminder that even though things are frequently labelled good or bad, that doesn't necessarily mean they are. It was more true to life. In most stories, vampires and demons are bad. In those same stories gods/goddesses and humans are good. In this story, the author made sure to clarify that things aren't quite so black and white. There's always a lot of grey area. One of my favorite parts of this story was near the end when a father told his daughter (leaving names out to avoid spoilers) that she would find the man she'd be with and have a child with, and he'd be evil. Seeing this male character through much of the book, I couldn't help but laugh to myself and think, "Well, he's not evil per se ... He's more ... chaotic neutral." I love that the author made sure that her characters were more colorful and complicated than simply good or evil. It definitely makes the read more intriguing.