Review: The Hunted

• Title:
  • The Hunted
• Author:
  • L.A. Banks
• Release:
  • June 19, 2004
• Format:
  • eBook
• Series:
  • Vampire Huntress Legend Series #3

The Hunted was the first book I ever “reviewed,” if you can even call it that. I was Google-searching the book back in 2020 while working on my wiki for the series, and Google popped up, asking if I wanted to leave a review, so I shit out a one-paragraph, nothing-sauce review. I later stumbled across it, copied it to my blog, and have been intending to do a proper review since. I bring this up because I said I didn’t remember the plot very well in my original review. I’ve since read it 2 more times, and now I have a much better understanding as to why I didn’t remember it well.

It’s endless drama, and hyper-descriptive detail about every little thing. I always want to reference the first episode of an online machinima I love, called “Red vs. Blue.” where the character Church says “Okay, okay, look… they’re just standing there and talking, okay? (getting angry) That’s all they’re doing. That’s all they ever do, is just stand there and talk. That’s what they were doing last week, that’s what they were doing when you asked me five minutes ago. So, five minutes from now, when you ask me, “What are they doing?” my answer’s gonna be, “They’re still just talking, and they’re still just standing there!”[Citation]

The Hunted is slow as fuck, at the start of the book, it goes into extreme detail about how disfigured and gored Carlos is, despite technically not being “dead” yet. There’s an entire chapter or two, where Carlos is chatting with a nameless character I’ll call “The Amazonian”, and then another couple of chapters where Damali and her team meet the Brazilian guardian team. This isn’t to say I mind a slow-paced novel or anything, but next to nothing happens. There are a couple of action scenes scattered about and another concert, but it feels like a pseudo-retelling of books 1 and 2.

• Berkfield is paranoid about the underworld.
• Carlos is a master vampire trying to play double agent and protect Damali from a threat while playing the vampire council.
• There’s a concert.
• The Guardian team is jumpy around Carlos, despite him saving their asses, time and time again.

I have to squeeze past this book to enjoy the series as a whole. It has its fun moments, but it’s mostly just a fucking slog to get through. I like to re-read books, and unless you’re an obsessive purist like me, who has to read every story, I’d honestly suggest skipping book 3 in subsequent re-reads. Even if you skip it entirely, you’re really not missing out on much aside from the Brazilian Guardian Team’s introduction and a little bit of lore exposition here and there. I think it’s genuinely the weakest book in the series.

The Hunted starts with Carlos, nearly dead in the desert. He’s revived by The Covenant, but his existence is kept a secret from Damali for some reason. Damali’s in an all-around bad mood, thinking Carlos is dead, and when an obviously-terrified Berkfield confronts her in an alleyway, she brushes him off. I feel like as a Guardian, and a Neteru, she really should have clued in on his experience with the supernatural, and given him the time of day, if not for mental closure, at least so he could protect himself. He’s not seen or heard from again, until the epilogue, which seems like a super random cameo, as if to say “Hey, remember this guy from books 1 – 2? Ok, just checking.” Much like this book as a whole, you could cut his scenes and wouldn’t miss a thing.

Carlos doesn’t want to meet back up with Damali but agrees to do so. The guardians let him into their compound, and then start talking about what a dangerous threat he is to them all. They all treat Carlos like he’s Fallon Nuit, despite using his body as a shield to protect them from the forces of hell, with ripening Neteru in his nose. Then why even let him into the building!?!? It’s hard not to hate the guardians for constantly shitting on Carlos for being a “master vampire” when he’s clearly not taking the opportunity to rip their hearts out and repeatedly goes out of his way to help them. It makes the entire cast cum off as ungrateful, bipolar fucking assholes. The Neteru Guardian Team are vampire exterminators, I get that. But they’re constantly shitting on the one fucking vampire who is trying to help them, has body blocked them from danger, and is trying to redeem his soul and return to the light.

Damali and Carlos flip-flopping doesn’t help. Carlos and the team keep the Brazil threat a secret from Damali, and she gets pissed off. Rightfully so, but she also “breaks up” with her soul mate because he doesn’t want to go to Brazil with her to handle it together which makes no sense. Brazil is his territory, he’s the North and South American master, and for some inexplicable reason, he goes from wanting to take down whatever’s killing humans there, to keep Damali safe, to not wanting to go. Damali and Carlos have their lovers spat, she acts as if she’s done with him and goes to Brazil where she constantly goes on about being single. Meanwhile Carlos instead opts to kick in lair doors and get his territory back in line off-page, instead of protecting his Neteru/soul mate/”Package”, which makes no sense. Why the fuck is he so focused on killing weaker vampires, when his soul mate is in a foreign nation hunting an unknown threat?

Damali goes on and on about how she and Carlos are done, some Brazilian guy flirts with her, and she tells him she’s in a relationship. Carlos can telepathically tell some guy is hitting on her and he’s suddenly team “Let’s go to Brazil!” again. The moment Carlos shows up in Brazil, Damali’s over her anger, and can’t wait to hook up with him again. He takes her to his lair, he goes to feed, and when she’s in his lair, she’s suddenly mistrusting of him. Damali goes from being angry with Carlos for bailing on her and keeping secrets, to wanting to go to his lair to fuck some more, to being jumpy and mistrustful of him like her guardians at the drop of a needle; and then she breaks up with him again.

All of the characters in this book cum off like fucking mentally unwell, irrational psycho’s with ridiculous mood swings and unclear priorities. Damali and Carlos act like a couple of high school kids, bickering and breaking things off and getting annoyed with each other who can’t decide if they love each other, hate each other, want to fuck, or mistrust each other. Kamal, the leader of the Brazilian Guardian Team seems to be the only fucking person in the book with a level head, and getting through The Hunted is honestly a combination of exhausting and boring.