Synopsis:
Abigail
is nineteen. Her job, she hunts demons.
Her
life so far has been tough. Having witnessed her family’s death and her
mother’s suicide, she’s been taken in by a priest, who believes her when she
says that she sees ghosts. Father Peter trains her as a demon hunter with three
other members, one being Daniel, who isn’t what he seems.
But
when a possession goes wrong, and ghosts start to attack Abigail, the tight
rope she has on her emotions soon starts to loosen. Abigail draws the unwanted
attention of the Reote, and she finds out a lot more than she was willing to
learn.
Knowledge
is power, but for Abigail, it’s her undoing, and the only thing keeping her
together is Daniel.
Review:
"Ghosts, angels, and demons exist. They are not the things
from movies. They are so much worse." (p. 43)
Hunters is the first
instalment in The Demon Series by Aoife Marie Sheridan.
I enjoyed the novel, loved the
characters but the protagonist, Abigail, I hated her!
It’s the first time for me to
dislike a central character so much.
Abigail Thornton is a
nineteen-year-old vodka-aholic demon hunter. But instead of demon hunting, it
seems she has a knack for attracting demons – for reasons unknown to her or the
reader.
In the first demon-hunting
encounter the reader comes across, the demon recognises Abigail and calls her
by her name. The situation is unheard-of, even for a hunter.
I particularly like how every
character is a mystery, not just the central character or Daniel, who is always
by her side and is like every girl's dream, but also Cathy, Nicholas, Father
Peter, even Simon, to a small extent.
Abigail has had a rough
childhood. Her mother, as she remembers her, suffered from depression and was
rarely herself. Her father was never around and her childhood was spent playing
with her brother Sam. Abigail came across her mother's body after she had
committed suicide. But that wasn't the worst thing eleven-year-old Abigail saw
that night, there was someone else in the bathroom, a dark figure, whose face
she had never seen before.
Abigail and I can agree that some
characters are just down-right obnoxious like Steven and Cathy, though the
latter can be good at times.
There is a thin line of romance
in the novel, between the often unfeeling Abigail and Daniel. The love is not
unrequited, it's a mystery of its own. However, one often gets the urge to want
to smack Abigail on the face, like when Cathy does, but for different reasons.
Sheridan lays out several
mysterious threads throughout the novel, a sort of large setting for the parts
to come. Some threads are answered, others are not. As the saying goes "The
more you know, the less you know." (No idea who said it), but that's
the situation with Abigail. She has so many questions about herself, her
parents, her life, Daniel. But as she begins to ask questions, she begins to
fear the answers that she will hear. Worse, answers come to questions she never
even thought of; they begin to surface, particularly those of her birth.
Hunters is narrated in the
first person perspective, mostly from Abigail's point of view, though
occasionally from Daniel's. Abigail might be a sad and angry teen most of the
time, but she is highly sarcastic, giving some dark humour to the already dark
story.
I look forward to reading the
coming instalments in the series and to see how these threads of mystery will
come to light. I hope more questions will be answered rather than asked.
About the Author:
Aoife
Marie Sheridan has loved reading from a very young age, starting off with mills
and boon's books, given to by her grandmother her love for romances grew, by
the age of 14 she had read hundreds of them.
Aoife
had a passion for writing poetry or in her eyes her journal entries. Aoife won
first place for two of her poems and had them published at the young age of
nineteen. Realising she needed to get a real job (What writing isn't) she
studied accountancy and qualified working in that field for many years, until
her passion for reading returned.
Aoife's
first book Eden Forest (Part one of the Saskia Trilogy) came to
be after a dream of a man and woman on a black horse jumping through a wall of
fire and the idea of Saskia was born. Now with her first novel published and
taking first place for Eden Forest with Writers Got Talent 2013, Aoife
continues to write tales of fantasy and is currently working on her third book
for the Saskia Trilogy amongst other new works.
Also, check out my five-star book review of Eden
Forest here.
