Book Review: A Wild Light

A Wild Light

By:  Marjorie M. Liu

Publisher:  Ace Novel

Publish Date:  July 27, 2010

Genre:  Urban Fantasy

Format:  Paperback; 302 pgs, pocket book size

Series:  3rd in Hunter Kiss series; 1st ~ Iron Hunt review here, 2nd ~ Darkness Calls review here

Recommendation:  Yes! I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys Urban Fantasy, with mystery and action with great characters.

Book Synopsis:
Obsidian shadows of the flesh…tattoos with hearts, minds, and dreams. By day, they are my armor. By night, they unwind from my body to take on forms of their own—demons of the flesh, turned into flesh.

For too long Maxine Kiss has felt an inexplicable darkness around her—a force she channels into hunting the demons bent on destroying the human race. But when she finds herself covered in blood and crouched beside her grandfather’s dead body with no memory of what happened or of the man she loves, Maxine begins to fear that the darkness has finally consumed her.

With blood on her hands and her sanity in question, Maxine must face the truth about who she really is and embrace the love of the only man who can help her—before she loses what she cares about most: her family.

First Sentence:
It was my birthday, the anniversary of my mother's murder, and on the way to the party, I made a special point to stop and kill a zombie.

My Review and Summary:
It's Maxine's birthday.  Her and the boys are on their way to perform their special ritual, no one knows of, to celebrate her birthday and the death of her mother ~ as they are the same day.  Then off to her party with her family, even her thousand million year old Grandfather is excited to celebrate a birthday with his grand daughter.  Zee warns Maxine there are whispers of troubles to come.  Then, Maxine wakes the next morning before dawn feeling every fiber of herself exhausted and weak.  Curled up on the floor and blood around her with the dead body beside her...  With loss of memory and an empty feeling in her heart, Maxine needs to solve the mystery.  Along with the loss of memory of how this person died, she had one important person erased from her memory... Why?  All this with the weight of the failing veil on her as well.

This is another great installment to the Maxine Hunter Kiss series.  Marjorie is great at starting a new book with the new story, mystery, and dropping you right into the plot.  She adds in through this story history to refresh your memory of the past happenings and relationships, but she doesn't reiterate completely to bore you or retell the previous.  She brings you in quickly to a new story and dedicates the time to it.

You don't have to read the previous two books to read this one, but I would say you should. You do get brief refreshers on what you need to know had happened to keep you up with the happenings. But I found them great memory joggers to remember the happenings in more details.


I enjoy this series with the strong character Maxine is and the boys at her sides.  Maxine is also joined by a few other strong characters.  Maxine is a character with weaknesses, and flawes, but she makes it through a stronger person.  You get to watch Maxine grow more in this book, more in her own way other than what is expected of the Kiss women.  Many of the characters of past come back in this book; Grant, Jack, Byron, Crazy Mary, and a few others.

You learn more of the scar under Maxine's ear, and her ancestor she resembles.  I learned much more of Maxine, the boys, and all the great magical characters.  I felt like more pieces of the puzzle of Maxine, her family, and the veil started to fall into place, pieces I didn't realize I was missing before.

I am glad to hear that Marjorie will be doing more books in this world with Maxine and the boys and I will be looking forward to them.

Would you like to visits Marjories site and learn more about her books?  Go Here.


I received a copy of this book for Review.


This book qualifies for my Speculative Fiction Challenge hosted by Book Chick City.