The Iron Hunt by Marjorie M. Liu (VO)

Synopsis : Living tattoos: demons of the flesh, turned into flesh, the only family demon hunter Maxine Kiss has left—and the only way she can survive, and fight, the imprisoned demonic army waiting to destroy humanity.

Review : It’s always terrible to have this kind of synopsis. We don’t learn a lot of things about the book and the story, but in the same time it piques our curiosity.

I think I can understand the mix opinions about this first volume. The author has a very particular writing style. Perhaps it’s only the case for me but I find there are some philosophical points (yes, yes it’s possible!). Maxine asks herself a lot of questions about her nature, about what she is, what she’ll become, what she has in her. Some questions which don’t even have any answers but which make the readers think. As far as that goes, we learn some big truth, as for example that sometimes there aren’t any answers whatever we want or we do. We can only learn a little part of the truth, or that each person hides some secrets or even that we can’t evolve without having someone who loves us despite it’s easier sometimes. I think it’s obvious and we can learn more about this things in this first novel. After that, it’s true that it’s a strange feeling and we can only like or dislike it. I think this concept is very interesting but I have a feeling of detachment about that. I don’t know if it’s really clear, it’s difficult to explain.

About the story, we discover Maxine, our heroine who seems so strong but who is also so vulnerable. Vulnerable with the love she has for the people who evolves with her, her need to help the others, or with the questions she asks herself. It’s interesting to see her evolve all along the story, to understand that sometimes we have to be intransigent too. It was a little difficult to see in my mind Grant, physically. Maybe it’s due to the french transduction… I don’t really know. Every characters are really interesting, they appear little by little and we learn slowly about them.

However we stand back, and despite our questions and Maxine’s, we don’t know a lot. It’s a quite frustrating situation. All along the book we ask ourselves more and more questions. And when everything really begins, the end comes with a lot of interrogations. I think we understand with our heroine, the problem is that she doesn’t know a lot, so it’s the same for us. I would love to learn more about Oturu, he is mysterious, different, noteven human with his atypical physical appearance. I hope to learn more too about the origins of everyone, about Jack, the little demons… I really like the little demons, they’re a part of Maxine and in the same time they have their own will. The idea of the tattoos living at night is original and I really like the concept.

Therefore, it was a nice book and I’m very curious to read the sequel. But in the same time something bothers me without knowing exactly the reason. Maybe it’s the searches about herself which make me uncomfortable.