The Iron Hunt

Amazon received

Read Abigail's review at All Things Urban Fantasy. ( )

Stilted writing. Writes without all words, expects you'll understand. Frequently, subjects not in sentences, verbs missing, commas instead of conjunctions, articles optional. Strange clauses strung together as one sentence, all in one, as one. Words. Phrases. Without grammar. Just a period. Sentence structure awkward, reading exhausting, what's happening unclear. Excerpt in book summary is an example. Not too bad, but whole book like that. But worse. Very confusing beginning, can't read more, too tedious. Others say writing good, I say trying too hard. ( )

Stilted writing. Writes without all words, expects you'll understand. Frequently, subjects not in sentences, verbs missing, commas instead of conjunctions, articles optional. Strange clauses strung together as one sentence, all in one, as one. Words. Phrases. Without grammar. Just a period. Sentence structure awkward, reading exhausting, what's happening unclear. Excerpt in book summary is an example. Not too bad, but whole book like that. But worse. Very confusing beginning, can't read more, too tedious. Others say writing good, I say trying too hard. ( )

The premise of THE IRON HUNT is great - ten thousand years ago a horde of demons was contained in a prison, and Wardens were created to police the earth and capture any escapees. But the Wardens were limited in number, and over the years escaped demons have killed every Warden but one: Maxine Kiss. What's worse, the prison itself is failing and Maxine has no hope of preventing the global annihilation that looms closer and closer on the horizon.

The supernatural twist is that Maxine has a motley crew of allies: little demons that accompany her like a ragtag army at night, but adhere to her skin during the day as tattoos and render her physically invulnerable. It's a pretty cool idea, and the dynamic between Maxine and her demon protectors is engaging.

There's a lot of good stuff going on with THE IRON HUNT - the problem is that Marjorie M. Liu's writing is somewhat overwrought. This is a sample of what I mean:

"Shadows shifted, stretching like mouths across the room, spreading and rising from the floor and walls in churning waves. Like oil running up walls, or the abyss of Oturu's cloak, full of pressed faces and twisted bodies. A breathing, aching darkness; a tsunami of soul cages; demons hurled and writhing. The apartment grew dark and closed, as suffocating as the Wasteland, and it was the wall of demons who made it so; entombing, consuming us."

It's beautiful, it's intense, it's vivid, and it's also constant. Every paragraph is stuffed to the gills with dramatic metaphors and dramatic imagery and dramatic tension. If she used this kind of language more infrequently, waiting for the right moment to pull out all the stops and wow us, I'd be a lot more impressed. Instead, I felt the writing actually interfered with my ability to follow the story and engage with the characters.

By the same token, I think that Liu made a mistake with THE IRON HUNT by turning the "mysterious" dial up to 11. Almost every character in the novel, other than Maxine, at some point taunts her with knowledge they cannot, or will not, share. Her little army of demons have made promises to keep quiet; her enemies have no interest in telling her what she doesn't know; while her more provisional allies seem to keep secrets just for the hell of it. A lot of the time the mystery is much bigger than the secret, which is easy to guess and fairly obvious; this has an unfortunate Wizard of Oz effect. In general, I feel like a little bit less mystery would have allowed for a lot more plot.

I'm on the fence about this book in the end. On the one hand, I really enjoy the premise and the characters. It's a smart book, and Liu is capable of really incredible writing. That's enough to make me curious about the series to come. On the other hand, if I get more of this overwrought language and atmosphere drenched in mysterious mystery this series will sink to the bottom of my list real fast. ( )