On The Hunt

by Dianne Duvall, Alexandra Ivy, Hannah Jayne, and Rebecca Zanetti

On the hunt. Mika Tanner has loved Bailey Morrell, a beautiful Healer, since childhood. But his duty as a Sentinel, a supernatural guardian of an ancient race, clashed with her rebellious spirit. Now a dangerous new anarchist group not only threatens life as they know it--but any chance of their being together again.

Scorpius rising. With a deadly disease spreading like wildfire across the country, microbiologist Nora Medina needs to focus all her energy on stopping the pandemic. But forced to work with Deacan McDougall against unexpected enemies with the seconds ticking by, she knows the explosion is coming.

Phantom embrace. Immortal Yuri Sokolov was born with the ability to see spirits, yet he's never seen one as lovely as Cat Seddon, the woman who haunts his home and his dreams. But amid their star-crossed love, a new danger may have Yuri facing a different kind of eternity.

Stake out. Vampire fashion designer Nina LaShay has a lot on her plate--just two days until fashion week and the model who was flirting with her photographer boyfriend is now a corpse in her studio. But when dead turns into undead and dangerous, Nina must find out who is responsible before the beautiful baby vamp takes too many bites out of the Big Apple.

• ISBN13: 9781420125139
• Publish Date: 25 August 2015
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Out of Print: 25 March 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Kensington Publishing
• Format: Paperback (UK Trade)
• Pages: 384
• Language: English

Reviews

[Linda]

This review was originally posted on (un)Conventional Bookviews
On the Hunt is an anthology with fantasy stories from four different authors' series. The first story made me satisfied and happy to discover a new-to-me author!



On the Hunt - this was my introduction to Alexandra Ivy, and I am hungry for more from her The Sentinels series. There is magic and mayhem, and sentinels who hunt down those who don't abide by the rules. I found the female lead character, a witch, to be very interesting, because she wanted to live on the outskirt of society in order to help heal those who couldn't always show themselves everywhere. The story was intriguing, even if it was not the beginning of the series, and I enjoyed both the world building and the character development.

Scorpius Rising - I am still shaking my head at myself for not having read this as soon as I received this ARC! I have read the first two books in Zanetti's The Scorpius Syndrome and really loved them! However, with Scorpius Rising, I got the very beginning of the Scorpius outbreak, and a back-story to several of the characters I've come to know and love in Mercury Striking and Shadow Falling. A thrilling, dark and realistic world, with a sickness that is scary because it sounds like something that could actually happen. Zanetti crowns it all with amazing characters who are both smart and strong willed, and ready to fight the fight not only for their lives but for the future of humanity.

Phantom Embrace - I had never read anything by Dianne Duval before, and I'm sorry to say I didn't enjoy her story as much as the others. The writing was more stilted, and especially the female lead character annoyed me - she was very woe is me, and her inner dialogues made me roll my eyes. Now, this is quite far into a series, and I might have enjoyed this more if I knew more about the world as I didn't really get everything that was going on between the immortals and the vampires, and how the guardians were supposed to keep the world safe.

Stake Out - I hadn't read any books by Hannah Jayne before, either, and I'm not sure if it's because I completely fell off the wagon with Phantom Embrace or something else, but I didn't manage to finish Stake Out. Again, this may very well work perfectly for fans of Jayne and her series, I just wasn't into anything to do with this story or the characters, so I quit reading after only ten-ish pages.



It was difficult to decide what was more aggravating. The swarm of bugs that attacked without warning. The goopy mud that clung to her shoes. Or the air that was so thick with humidity that breathing was an Olympic sport.

Any sense of right and wrong that had been instilled in them by their parents had packed its bags and headed for the door.

[kimbacaffeinate]

read Scorpius Rising by Rebecca Zanetti (The Scorpius Syndrome 0.5) 4.0 stars. Intense, second chance romance in a post apocalyptic setting.

[EBookObsessed]

How can I hate a book that features four of my favorite authors? Sorry, I can’t. When I saw my first promo for this anthology, I knew it was a must have.
I received an audio book from Tantor Audio and I had mixed feelings about this narrator. Her male voices were actually better than her female voices. In the Rebecca Zanetti story, Deacon had a hint of a Scottish brogue which got thicker in areas and sounded great. Yet in the Alexandra Ivy novella, Bailey’s voice was a bit on whiny side almost to the point it that I wanted to dislike her. This narrator needs to be careful in choosing her voices for characters. No one wants their heroine to sound whiny, even if she is. It gets to be too much.

On the Hunt by Alexandra Ivy – Alexandra Ivy gave us a novella out of her The Sentinel series. I am a fan of her Guardians of Eternity series, but after reading the first novella introduction into The Sentinel series, I wasn’t interested in reading any more. I wasn’t a fan of the world building in the new series. But On The Hunt was more a story about reconnecting with a lost love, who just happens to have healing magic and who gets kidnapped by the bad guy for her abilities. Mika Tanner is a sentinel and one of their best trackers. He is sent into the Bayou to find a missing acolyte from the monastery. His tracks the blood of the young acolyte right to the front door of his lost love Bailey Morrell. While Mika was all about follow the rules, Bailey was a free spirit, who believed she should heal anyone who needed her help. On the morning of their wedding, Bailey took off running. Mika tracked her but let her be since he thought she didn’t want to be with him. This time Bailey might be in danger from whatever the acolyte has become involved in. Mika is going to stay close to protect her and he has no plans of ever leaving her again.

Thoughts:
I liked these characters. Even though I still have some issues with the world building, I enjoyed the story of Mika and Bailey.

Scorpius Rising by Rebecca Zanetti – This is the first novella and introduction to her new Scorpius Syndrome series. College students are looking for meteors in the dessert and come across one that must have broken off the Scorpius Comet which passed closed to the Earth earlier this year. Those students came down with a mysterious fever. Several died and the survivors seem to now be psychotic, including the President’s daughter. Deacon McDougall, an adviser to the President, is in charge of trying to contain any spread of whatever bacteria came off this meteor. He needs the help of the one person who doesn’t want to see him, his ex-wife, Dr. Nora Medina. Nora is one of the leading researchers in biological infections. Together Deke and Nora will race to find a cure for the Scorpius bacteria before it can kill millions, but it might be too late already to stop a pandemic especially when the infected lose their humanity and feel compelled to spread the infection.

Thoughts:
I couldn’t listen to this one fast enough and am looking forward to Mercury Striking. The characters were enjoyable and had a lot of passion, and the action stayed high throughout the story. Rebecca stayed just on the edge of dark with this deadly bacteria pandemic so the story was edgy without being gruesome. This is going to be a really good series.

Phantom Embrace by Dianne Duvall – Dianne brings us the story of Yuri Sokolov is an Immortal Guardian who has a gift of seeing and speaking with spirits. Yuri notices a young woman hanging around while he was hunting for vampires. He sees her again later at David’s house. In fact, he has been watching this restless spirit for some time now. He can’t image why David and Seth allowing this spirit to hang around the Guardians until he finds out she is the sister of Bastien Newcombe. Yuri has learned a long time ago not to encourage the spirits since once they realize you can hear them, they never leave you alone. But something about Catherine (Cat) Seddon draws Yuri. As the days go by, Yuri is spending more and more of his time with Cat and even though he knows the danger, he starts to fall in love with her. What can the future hold for an Immortal Guardian in love with a beautiful spirit?

>b>THOUGHTS:
I love the Immortal Guardians. As lovely as this love story was, it still left me feeling a little sad. There was no good outcome to be had here. We already knew the sad story of Bastien’s sister Cat who was pregnant when she was killed by her husband who had turned into a vampire. There was never going to be a HEA here so we have to be content where Dianne takes us this time.

Stake Out by Hannah Jayne – Vampire and fashionista Nina LaShay is back in New York for Fashion Week prepping her new line Drop Dead Fashions for the runway. She won last year’s competition even though some of her competitors turned up dead. Oops. She is hoping that this year’s competition is less bloody but when she finds one of her models, first dead and then undead, she needs to find out who is making baby vamps so she can get back to making awesome fashion.

THOUGHTS:
When I first checked out this story, I was confused. I thought it was a re-release of the short story from Predatory which came out two years ago. After I listened obviously it is a second story involving Nina at Fashion week. I miss the Underworld Detective Agency and especially Sophie and Nina, so I enjoyed spending a little more time with these characters.

Received an audiobook from Tantor Audio in exchange for an honest review.

[Cocktails and Books]

This review was originally posted on Cocktails and Books

Four wonderful, unique and intense stories.

I have not read two of the four authors that were represented in On the Hunt. But I am now fans of all of them. From Vampires to spirits, to healers and soldiers on a mission to save the world. These four stories were hot, scary, intense and sweet. A little of everything that makes up a great book.

On The Hunt by Alexandra Ivy

This was a short sweet story of a Healer named Bailey who ran away from her love to find herself. Mika was a guardian sentinel sent to find a missing sentinel. I felt that I did not miss anything with Mika and Bailey. I felt that I have known them through many books. I was instantly rooting for this couple the moment Mika showed up.

Scorpius Rising by Rebecca Zanetti

Rebecca has done it again. This story went from sweet to scary intense in a moment’s notice. Deacan a soldier trying to stop a deadly virus from going global enlists the help of his ex-wife Nora who is a scientist. The villain in this story really gave me chills.

Phantom Embrace by Dianne Duvall

This was a little weird for me but that is what made me like it. Yuri and Cat are ghosts. Ghosts can get their HEA too. I did not know any of the characters so I felt a little lost. But from what I could get of it I liked.

Stake Out by Hannah Jayne

This was just ok for me. It was cute. Nina was fun to read. I felt like I was reading a episode of Buffy the vampire slayer. Does that make sense? But it was fun to read.

From what I gather after finishing the book is that three of the four stories are not new stories. This is the only problem I had with it. I think these anthologies should just be new storylines that way the reader is not missing out on anything. But aside from that I did get introduced to some authors that are new to this reader and I will be searching them out.




Reviewer information can be found under the Tags section of the post on our site.