The Cover of ‘Hunters’, art by Marlena Mozgawa

Okay, so here we go. I’m going to give you the low down on book 1 ‘HUNTERS‘, but there won’t be any spoilers here. Just information you’ll pick up in the first ten or so chapters anyway. The ground work, so to speak.

That way you’ll know whether ‘Hunters‘ will whet your appetite for a read.

The book is the start to a multi-character story that will span multiple books, and travel all over the globe. Here’s the cover blurb…

Welcome to the new age…
Those left on Earth survived the Rising. They survived the War.
Humanity – pushed to the point of extinction – is forced to accept that monsters no longer dwell in the murky shadows of myth and legend. They are frighteningly real. An uneasy peace has settled across the globe on the cusp of an international Summit intended to gather the surviving Human factions with the new nations of Vampyrii, Werewolf, Troll, Ice Giant, and Fae. Their leaders, their delegates, their decision makers. A conference where the honorable strive to make the world a better place, and where corrupt politicians pursue their own selfish agendas. Alliances are formed…coups are plotted.
In Werewolf-held Canada, a girl is taken. A rescue mission ensues.
In Europe, a grieving hybrid soldier in search of answers returns to
London to face the ghosts of her past.
In Vampyrii-occupied America, one of their race seeks to restore a small part of the world to its former self.
But trouble is brewing beneath the surface as society teeters on the
precipice of calamity.
Mysterious forces work to threaten this new way of life.
Threaten to reveal who are the hunted…and who are the Hunters.

The world is 2045, twenty-nine years after The Rising changed our world.

Let’s start…in the United Kingdom, my home turf.

You’ll meet Gayle Knightley.

She’s a hybrid. The result of a loving relationship between her Fae mother and her Human father. She’s in her late 20s and has plied her trade as a Hunter for the last decade.

Hunters are specialist soldiers deployed by the Federated States of Europa. They have limited control over the powers of the elements.

When we join Gayle, she is returning to Buckingham Palace, now the Human Fae Academy, after a prolonged recovery period. Her team wiped out in an incident known as ‘Bloody Valletta‘. She is being brought back to train her replacements and she is NOT happy about it.

There you’ll also meet Michael Reynolds.

He’s a former US Marine who was recruited to the Academy to teach the cadets alongside Gayle. Never having been a teacher before, he’s nervous about the role, but takes to it like a professional. So, when he meets foul-mouthed, angry, manipulative Gayle, the two of them rub each other the wrong way.

But…is there also the spark of something else between them?

Across the Pond, in New Victus (the former United States), you’ll meet Lyssa Balthazaar.

Lyssa is the head of a very old Vampyrii family, and she detests the man that currently holds the post of Grand Chancellor of their nation. One Sebastian StormHall. Vampyrii spent centuries integrating subtly and unseen into Human culture, and in one fell swoop, he ruined that. Lyssa is determined to put right what Sebastian broke, and with that in mind, she has entered into a relationship (business and intimate) with an ally north of the border in the former country of Canada, now called Pack Nation.

That man is Damian Dane.

The Wolf King. He is the leader of the Wolf Packs. Not an easy job, but one he was born to do. The role handed to him by the death of his mother. His world is thrown into turmoil when he gets reports of a rogue-Wolf loose in the forests of Mont Tremblant. He knows the area well as someone he deeply cares for lives there. Circumstances force him to reach out and engage the services of someone from his past. A Bounty Hunter.

Zarra Anderson is that Bounty Hunter.

She and Damian had relations back in the day, so she is reluctant to take his job. But the pay is too good to pass up. So, she and her partner Becka head North. When she arrives in Pack Nation she has to face the ghosts of her past, while hunting a foe that turns out to be far more dangerous than she previously imagined. Her adventure will lead to an acceptance of who she is and how she faces the future.

Meanwhile, in Nexus City (Iceland), you’ll meet Allyson Knightley.

The middle of the three Knightley sisters, Allyson is struggling with the responsibility of trying to plan the security details for the upcoming Nexus Summit, while struggling with the aftermath of a breakup from her girlfriend, trying to counsel her elder sister through her grief, and trying to get her younger sister, Carrie-Anne, the permission she needs to go and investigate the new mountain range that mysteriously sprang up overnight in Eastern Europe.

As separate as all these threads may sound, they will all come together in a large narrative as each character starts to uncover the truth behind The Rising, and why the world changed in 2016.

BOOK STATS*

*accurate as of 11th November 2021

So, if you read Songbird book 1 ‘HUNTERS‘ what are you getting into?

Well, it consists of…

  • Released on 17th March 2021
  • 85 Chapters (including Prologue and Epilogue)
  • 530 pages in Paperback, 406 pages in Hardcover
  • Average chapter length: 1,750 words (it’s punchy, easy to pick up!)
  • Which gives us a total of 148,829 words in the whole book (yup, it’s a big one!)
  • It follows 5 main characters and a host of supplementary ones (think Game of Thrones!)
  • But…each chapter details a different character’s perspective and it’s pretty simple to follow (so think of it as the Anti-Game of Thrones)

It’s on sale now!

Click HERE to take you Amazon to purchase your copy now! 

CLICK HERE FOR A SNEAK PEAK AT ‘HUNTERS’
Last Christmas, I put up the first three chapters for a limited time… I’ll let you into a secret…shhhh…they’re still here!
You can’t find them through a menu, and I’ve taken down the original post, but the page is still there, and this here box is a link!
Congratulations for finding this little Easter Egg (or Christmas Egg I suppose!)