Beast Hunter
Michelle Israel Harper
Beast Hunters - Prequel
SPOILER WARNING for "Arista's Thoughts"
Where to Purchase: Amazon
Official Blurb:
Ro’s people are starving. A curse has overtaken her land, blackening the soil, wiping out crops, and bringing ruin to all. She doesn't know what to do.
The only people who thrive are the huntsmen, brought in by the mysterious Gautier to stem the flow of ravenous creatures looking for food.
When Ro accidentally kills a wolf, an idea begins to form. Could she become a huntress? Earn enough livres to feed her family?
But her world is shattered when her father promises her to a beast in exchange for his own life. If she doesn’t go, a curse will fall on her family worse than the one destroying their land. But Ro is determined to save her family another way.
Will Ro have the courage to seek her own fate instead of the one pressed upon her?
As a Retellling:
This is basically set-up for Harper's full-length novel Kill the Beast, but it does cover the first act of the original fairy tale - with the twist being that instead of our heroine's demure sweetness, Ro is quite resentful of the hard times that have overtaken her family, and she also has more than her fair share of Rebellious Princess Syndrome, and instead of going to the beast to save her father ... she runs away in search of the means to save her land. The Red Riding Hood parallels come up in the fact that there are Hunters who kill wolves (the book actually opens with Ro killing one accidentally), and the climax involves Ro meeting with a "grandmother" character who's not who she seems.
Arista's Thoughts:
I really love the concept for Kill the Beast, and this prequel hasn't turned me off from my goal of tracking that book down and reading it ... but Beast Hunter suffered for being, well, a prequel. There was a lot set up in the book that wasn't really resolved, and the climax happened when there was still a bit of book left, leaving the final act feeling a little underwhelming. Ro was also a very inconsistent character and had no real growth. I feel that these issues could and probably will be resolved in the main book, but I just couldn't connect with this prequel.
Prequel - Beauty and the Beast
Inspired By - Little Red Riding Hood
Twisted Tale
"I'll Save Myself"
Traditional European
Have you read Beast Hunter? If so, leave a comment below with your own short review to help future readers!
