Have been meaning to get around to reading Hunters Unlucky for a few years now, and Ikrutt’s persistent raffle reminders finally goaded me into it. Ended up devouring it instantly! Here is a doodle of how I imagined the first encounter with one of the creatures found in the book + more nattering about the story.
Sometimes reading books feel like slogging through mud, but this one flew by in an instant. The book is actually 5 books collected into one, and it was only once I got to book 3 that I tore my eyes away long enough to go “Hey wait, did the chapter numbers reset?” It just flows really well! A lot of political maneuvering and it’s all rooted well in plausible motivations from interesting characters. It gets harder to just blindly root for “the good guys” as you learn more about why every group is tragically crashing into one another. Their actions all make perfect sense and it’s horribly compelling to watch it all play out. Lovely stuff.
One thing that really struck me was that, from a fantasy perspective, a lot of the worldbuilding and the species design feels just a hair away from what you could expect to find in real life. For those that crave crazypants species design, it might even feel too ordinary at first: one main species is, well, big cats that can talk, and the other main species are basically deer that eat meat a bit more frequently than real life deer (and talk). But then you realize that the real novelty comes from the unique, distinct cultures that spring from their talking-animal natures, and as you delve deeper into the world, it rewards you with some truly off-the-wall species and lore. (See image above.)
Speaking of fantasy, everything feels exceptionally grounded—it’s not some Warrior Cats type affair full of mystical StarClan Magic that’s not meant to be realistic or plausibly explained in any way. The story does a great job showing incredible-seeming, mystical-seeming events through the eyes of our small, painfully mortal protagonists who are struggling to understand a wide, confusing, dangerous world. But after more discovery and exploration, the story almost always rewards the reader with subtle explanations that, from a biology standpoint, made me go “Ah! Aha!” Overall, it really delighted me to see the story go to such lengths to try and be biologically consistent and sensible. There’s a few blatantly fantastical exceptions, but they become even more special and fascinating thanks to their relative rarity and clear break from the grounded nature of everything else.
Overall: as someone who loves talking animal stories, I really enjoyed the book, enough to go grab the sequel. Definitely recommend.
