It's classified (rather to my surprise) simply as "fiction" on the spine, but I'd say it fits better in the urban fantasy or paranormal romance category. I'm not really a romance reader, but the similarity of paranormal romance and urban fantasy (in subject matter, if not in style) has tempted me on occasion. The last one I tried, though, I didn't get more than a couple chapters into and I gave up. And it was a struggle to get that far. And I am super stubborn about finishing even books I don't really like (every now and then, I even end up liking them in the end). It was a case of really great back cover copy masking a truly, truly mediocre book. It really does show that good marketing can sell just about anything. Usually, I read the first page or so before buying a book, but it was on the library sale shelf and only 50 cents. Well, at least I supported the library.
I'm very tempted to link it here, so you can see how the back cover blurb made it seem really funny. And I could see where it was meant to be funny. Only it wasn't. Also, the writer used the word "cybersex" way too many times in the first few pages. Does anyone even say "cybersex" anymore? I don't want to be mean, though. I bet the writer has lots of fans who find her hilarious, and maybe it's just a case of me not liking that particular brand of humor. Or logical inconsistencies. Oh, hell, this is the book:
Unlike the book above, The Renegade Hunter was a decent read. Not an "add this author to my faves and immediately track down everything she's written" good, but definitely "pick up more in the series if I find them in a charity sale or at the library" sort of read. Good bulk reading with a few interesting twists (sci-fi vampires, for example--not totally original, and not really even necessary to the plot, but a nice effort at making vampires a little bit new). There were two things that really bugged me, though. one was that there was never any reason given for why the bad guy was after the main character in the first place. After she meets the love interest, there's good reason, but a line or two explaining why he was after her before that, when she just happened to be in a fenced and guarded and difficult-to-get-into house rather than her usual not-guarded-at-all apartment where she had been mere hours before.
The second thing that bugged me, even more than the first, was that we find out at the end that the love interest has been declared innocent of the crime he was accused of and on the run for for fifty years, but we are never told what actually happened! We know why he was accused and what people had thought he had done, but at the end the two main characters are told he's absolved and he'll be told shortly what really happened, and then the book ends. What! I wanted to know too!
But maybe that's in the next book. If so, it's a cheap trick to get the reader to read the next volume. Anyway. End of rant. Aside from that, the writing was competent, the plot decent, and the characters enjoyable. Good pulpy bedtime reading, in other words.
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