#11: The Iron Hunt by Marjorie M. Liu

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

A long time ago, demons and other monsters walked the world, until a joint venture between gods and hunters locked them away. Now, though, the gods are gone (as far as anyone knows) the veil locking the demons away is coming apart, and there’s only one hunter left.

The hunter is Maxine Kiss, the last in a line of hunters stretching back thousands of years. By day, the demons bound to her family take on the form of tattoos on her body and create armor, by night, they come alive and help her fight. The only problem is that the demons are passed down from mother to daughter, and that when the demons move on to the next generation, the mother is almost immediately killed by the monsters she’s no longer protected from.

This is Liu’s first Urban Fantasy book, though her Dirk & Steele books are generally pretty close to it already. There’s an obvious attempt to separate this from her romance novels, with mixed results. Unlike most UF heroines, Maxine is not torn between two Others or angsting about her love life. She has a stable, happy relationship with a genuinely nice and accepting guy. Not the judgmental guy who holds her to ridiculous standards or the one who’s supposedly the better option but doesn’t respect her or one who keeps secrets, etc. etc. (can you tell I’m jaded about UF male love interests and supposed “nice guys”?) This, though, is something I’ve come to expect (and appreciate) in Liu’s books.

Unfortunately, Maxine herself didn’t grab me the way Liu’s other heroines have. I like her, and think she’s a step up from a lot of the UF heroines out there, but something about her never really quite grabbed me. That, however, may be a result of my loving the heroines of her romance novels so much, and Liu clearly trying to set this series (though everything that needs to be wrapped up is, this is clearly the beginning of a series) apart.

Though I didn’t love it as much as I expected to, this hits a lot of my storytelling kinks. Tattoos that are not only significant, but are also living. A stable, established romantic relationship. Hereditary power with dark consequences. A Mythic approach to the world. Deities in the modern world. Etc.

I also like that the central relationship of the series isn’t between Maxine and her fiancé, Grant, but between Maxine and her mother, Jolene, and how that’s reflected by Maxine’s own views on eventual motherhood. In all honesty, I might rather read about Maxine’s mother than Maxine, because even before Maxine was born, she’s been told that there would be something wrong about her daughter and that she’d be better off killing Maxine and having another daughter, which would expand her own lifetime.

I like that Maxine has issues about her mother-about her death-that aren’t the typical “Mommy died sending me off on lifelong vengeance” or “I must live up to the legend” or “Mommy was mean and I must prove myself.” That her mother would eventually die because Maxine exists-and die violently-is a fact that Maxine has had to live with her entire life, and from the moment she knew she was pregnant, her mother knew that she would spend the rest of her life protecting Maxine, only to eventually lose her own protection to Maxine. All of which actually makes me sad that Maxine herself doesn’t have a daughter in the book.

But the dynamics of the family, and how the women deal with it, are, I think, best shown in two flashbacks. In one, Maxine sees her mother-then pregnant-confronted with the leader of the planet’s monsters. When taunted about how her unborn daughter will fail, the demons declare that they will love Maxine just like they love Jolene, and all those before her, and Jolene cheerfully tells her that by then, she’ll be in heaven, and she’ll laugh as her daughter wins. And then she blows the monster’s head off. In the other, Maxine travels back in time 36 years and meets her grandmother, Jean, and sees her then-14-year-old mother. To Jean, this is not a joyous moment of seeing the family legacy in the next generation, but proof that her daughter, who she has bled for and protected, who she will die for, will not live to be fifty. She can’t be happy to meet her granddaughter because her granddaughter is proof that her daughter will die young.
 
So, not as good as I had hoped, but still pretty interesting.

Comments

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

I picked this up a few times in the bookstore and it looked intriguing, but I have a love/hate thing with UF (largely for the romantic reasons you mention).

Didn't notice it was written by Liu. It sounds intriguing--I'll have to give it a try.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Always giood to learn someone else has a love/hate relationship with UF.

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

I love the "urban" and the "fantasy," not such a fan of Endless Romantic Conflict (it's probably why I like Jim Butcher best--Harry may have annoying chivalrous tendencies, and he may angst after exes, but he isn't Constantly Torn Between Two (or Three) Women and blah). (Also, not a fan of first person narration, but it seems to go with the genre.)

The genre has so much potential.

I'm glad Liu is branching out, though--I enjoy her paranormal romance, but not as much as I would actual urban fantasy.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Dresden Files is probably my favorite UF, too. Butcher does a surprisingly good job of making it clear that there's a divide between Harry's attitudes and his own attitudes, and seems to usually have that divide manifest by regularly having women literally and figuratively kick him upside the head for them. Really, it tends to amaze me that I really do love Harry a lot, given how much he can annoy me at times. (Dresden Files also wins points for me for having a main supporting character who is both a family man and a devout Christian, and consistently portraying his faith as good and making his family important, both of which tend to be rare in sff.)

ETA because I do not know HOW my cranky icon originally ended up in the comment.

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and they've been consistently getting better. I'm glad he scaled back a bit after the Lash storyline. I have a feeling it'll be hard to do much after the Black Council conspiracy is resolved, but maybe he's planning on wrapping it up after that and focusing on his fantasy series (which doesn't interest me).

I like the Carpenters a lot, although I thought a certain part of Small Favor was a bit of a cop-out.

(Anyway, woah, off-topic!)