Novel: Skinwalker by Faith Hunter

Last week I brought home another of my typical stacks of dark fantasy books. One was so good that I gobbled it up all at once. I started reading it around 4 pm and was done before midnight. It was called Skinwalker by an author known as Faith Hunter (I suspect this might be a pseudonym but I don't know for sure). 

The protagonist is a Cherokee woman who is a shape-changer.  Jane Yellowrock can take on the shape of nearly anything that is approximately close to her own body weight. Any excess mass she temporarily stores in rocks. She rides a Harley, practices "dirty" martial arts, knows her way around all sorts of guns and knives, is 6 feet tall with 4 foot long black hair, knows how to belly dance, eats massive mountains of bloody steaks (shape-changing is hungry work!) and drinks gallons of gourmet teas from around the world. (I have a particular soft spot for anyone who appreciates fine tea.) She is hired by a consortium of New Orleans vampires to come to Louisiana and hunt down a rogue vampire that is killing both vampires and humans alike and attracting far too much negative attention. 

One of the things I particularly liked about Hunter's writing was how she was able to switch the internal running dialogue of Jane's thoughts between her normal human thoughts, and the thoughts of her inner "Beast". Jane's thoughts are pretty typical of any woman's thoughts (as long as she is a tough vampire hunting chick). "Beast's" thoughts are truncated, cutting out anything superfluous, and focused upon the heightened senses of an animal. Hunter does an excellent job of describing the world through smell, taste, touch, sound and sight. She also is able to make really clear what are the important things for a predatory animal such as survival, the hunt, dominance, territory and possession, and mating. And, both Jane and the Beast have their own senses of dark humor. 

Just the way I like them, the monsters are most definitely monsters - albeit complex monsters. Humans are monstrous in their own ways just as the supernaturals are. Relationships are complicated and fraught with tension, uncertainty, deception and risk. There is sex, but the book doesn't start, end and revolve around it. This is not vampire "lite" Harlequin Romance shlock. Fights are dangerous, bloody, and believable. Characters really get hurt and die. There is great suspense, and many twists and turns that keep me guessing. I truly had no idea who the "Big Bad" was until the very end. 


Here is a link to Faith Hunter's website: http://www.faithhunter.net/wp/


I can hardly wait to read the second Faith Hunter book in the series which is called Blood Cross. The third book comes out in January 2011 and is called Mercy Blade. Until then...