A reader quickly glancing at the covers of Marjorie M. Liu’s Hunter Kiss saga (The Iron Hunt, Darkness Calls, and the recently released A Wild Light) may see just another conventional paranormal fantasy series featuring a tattooed, weapon-wielding warrioress but anyone who has actually read these novels knows differently. There is nothing clichéd about this series—in fact, in many ways it’s one of the most innovative paranormal fantasy sagas out there…
The storyline revolves around Maxine Kiss, who is covered with demonic tattoos (“the boys”—Raw, Aaz, Dek, Mal, and Zee) and is the last in a long line of female Wardens guarding a failing interdimensional prison that will eventually unleash a demonic army onto the world. But Maxine’s mother died when she was young and she has more than a few questions concerning her heritage, her magical abilities, her purpose in life, etc. And although her sentient tattoos make her immortal during the day, at night the demons unwind from her body and manifest themselves on the earthly plane—which means, aside from having five demon bodyguards, Maxine becomes vulnerable and very much mortal.
By nature a nomadic loner, Maxine has found an unlikely home in Seattle. She has found a family of sorts in Grant Cooperon, a former priest who runs a Seattle homeless shelter; Byron, a teenager who lives at the shelter; Marritine, a marijuana growing old lady who could very well be crazy; etc. But all of these characters are much more than they seem—they’re more than human. Grant, for example, is also known as “Lightbringer” and has the ability to manipulate people’s auras. Byron is a chronic amnesiac but he’s also immortal and a vessel for the essence of Maxine’s enigmatic grandfather, Jack Meddle.
In the latest Hunter Kiss novel, A Wild Light, Liu unleashes a virtual bombardment of plot bombshells. Maxine’s heritage—her mother’s and grandmother’s pasts—is a lie. The reasons why Maxine’s bloodline was created—to guard the prison veil against wayward demons—is a lie. But the more she finds out about Grant’s past, the nightmarish Reaper Kings, and the multitudes of demons trapped behind the prison veil, the less she understands herself, and the unfathomable darkness inside her...
So why do I consider this saga paranormal fantasy gold? Here are just a few reasons:
1. Marjorie Liu is a sublimely cerebral wordsmith. Her narrative approach is as understated as it is controlled. For instance, steamy sex is a mainstay in much of paranormal fantasy today but although Liu’s latest does feature an intensely emotional and wildly erotic session between Maxine and Grant, she writes the scene with restraint and with class. Some authors might stretch out a scene like this to a dozen or so pages of graphic play-by-play sexual Twister but Liu’s scene barely lasts a few pages. And you know what? It’s one of the most arousing and sensual scenes I’ve come across in a long time. Sexual intimacy doesn’t have to be written like hardcore porn to be sexy. In fact, there is a lot to be said for “narrative grace” that leaves some things up to the reader’s imagination.
Yes, Liu’s writing style is elegant and restrained but I’ve also described it as philosophical at times. Amidst the zombies and werewolves and demons, she throws in deeply contemplative sentences like these:
• “Destruction and rebirth go hand in hand…the two are the same. Everything breaks. When broken, born again.” – A Wild Light
• “Pieces of the Labyrinth are fragments of possibility. And there is nothing more dangerous than maybe.” – The Iron Hunt
• “We run, and we run…but never far enough.” – A Wild Light
That’s why I love reading Marjorie Liu – there’s a sophistication and grace and meditative quality to her novels that I rarely come across in contemporary paranormal fantasy.
2. Her sense of humor, like her writing style, is an exercise in understatement. It’s wry and witty and a perfect complement to her controlled pacing and deeply considered storylines. Here are some examples:
• “I smiled. ‘Fight me, I’ll kill you…’ I turned my back on her and walked to Grant and Jack, both of whom stared at me. I made a face at them. Dek and Mal began humming Elton John’s ‘The Bitch is Back’…” – A Wild Light
• “‘Okay,’ I said to the side of Grant’s head. ‘According to the zombies, the world is going to end, there’s a demon who can choke me with his mind who claims I summoned him, and I may have found my biological grandfather. Who seems to be living with Badelt’s ex-wife.’
‘Wow.’ Grant did not stop playing the piano. ‘All I’ve got is gas.’” – The Iron Hunt
• “Raw wrapped his arms around me, pressing his face against my back. Aaz shuffled a couple steps sideways, and returned moments later to push a paper cup into my hands. Starbucks. I smelled hot chocolate. Yes. We were definitely agents of the apocalypse.” – A Wild Light
• Maxine’s demonic tattoos are obsessed with Bon Jovi. In every novel, there are at least a few references to the aging New Jersey rocker: “I found a pay phone two blocks away. Battered relic, covered in graffiti. I dialed 911 and left a brief message with the operator—teenager dead, murdered, several blocks south of Safeco Field—and hung up… I was still rattled, not thinking straight. I wanted to go back to the dead girl and wait with her body—as if that would make a difference. Ease, somehow, the pain and loneliness of her murder. Instead, I kept walking… The rumble of the trains seemed louder. The air tasted sharper, and suddenly electric, as though a city full of alarms had just gone off, and I was feeling the pulse of thousands of eyes opening at once. In my ear, Dek and Mal began humming more Bon Jovi. ‘Have a Nice Day.’” – Darkness Calls
3. But the primary reason I think Liu’s Hunter Kiss saga resonants with me is the genre transcendent qualities of the storyline. Yes, it’s categorized as paranormal fantasy but it has a decidedly science fiction/adventure fantasy undertone: “Demons, like the Avatars—and humans—had traveled to earth via a network of interdimensional highways. A crossroads between here and there, a place beyond space, or time, or anything that I could possibly comprehend. Only that it was the Labyrinth, the quantum rose, a maze of knotted roads between countless worlds.”
The foundation on which the Hunter Kiss story line is built upon is very much reminiscent of Michael Moorcock’s Multiverse sagas (Elric, Dorian Hawkmoon, Jerry Cornelius, etc.)—and has the same visionary feel as Golden Age science fiction writers like Asimov, Clarke, Pohl, etc. There is a real sense of wonder in Liu’s realm—and after the bombshells in A Wild Light, I can’t even imagine where Marjorie will take the saga in the future… the possibilities are, like the worlds in the Labyrinth, virtually limitless.
Paranormal fantasy fans looking for an intelligent, entertaining, and thought-provoking saga should most definitely seek out this elegantly written series—life-sized cardboard cutout of Bon Jovi not included.
Paul Goat Allen has been a full-time book reviewer specializing in genre fiction for almost the last two decades and has written more than 6,000 reviews for companies like Publishers Weekly, The Chicago Tribune, and BarnesandNoble.com. In his free time, he reads.
