Title: The Dark Hunters Vol 1
Story: Sherrilyn Kenyon
Adapted: Joshua Hale Fialkov
Art: Claudia Campos
Publisher: St Marin’s Griffin
ISBN: 9780312376871
May Contain Spoilers
Amanda is having a bad day. She’s still bummed about getting dumped by her boyfriend, and it doesn’t help that they work together. Not only is she forced to see him every day, she must also listen to him bad mouth her family. Things take a turn for the terrible when she’s abducted while on her way to take her sister’s dog for a walk. She wakes up and finds herself handcuffed to a handsome stranger, and learns that a really creepy guy has mistaken her for her sister, Tabitha. Worse, he really, really hates Tabitha. And the guy she’s handcuffed to. Can they escape from his clutches before they wind up dead?
Overall, I enjoyed The Dark Hunters, though I was disappointed with the uneven pacing. The book is at it’s best when the dialog zips along and Amanda snaps her thoughts into the air like a gunslinger facing down the town sheriff. She longs for a calm, boring life, and actively pursues reserved relationships while holding down a yawn worthy job as an accountant. Who can blame her? Her family is nuts, and her sister hunts vampire for kicks. She also doesn’t hesitate to let Amanda know what she’s wasting her life chasing after boring men and that she needs to learn to live it up a little.
I don’t think Tabitha meant for Amanda to get caught up in a personal war between Kyrian, a vampire, and Desiderius, a daimon. Before he became a vampire, Kyrian was a prince from Thrace who was betrayed by love. He gives up everything for revenge. His soul? Didn’t need it anymore and traded it for an eternal life, wealth, and the chance for vengeance. Desiderius preys on human souls, so it’s Kyrian’s job to hunt him down and make him beg for mercy.
Now, I have to say that being handcuffed to a hunk of beefcake like Kyrian doesn’t seem to be such a bad thing, but Amanda’s life of peace and quiet goes up in a puff of smoke. There are some clever exchanges between the hunter and the human, and more danger than you can shake a stick at. What bogs the story down is the non-stop, multi-word balloon exchanges where Kyrian’s background and the dark hunters are explained in tedious detail. Instead of following along and learning about Sherrilyn Kenyon’s world of The Dark Hunters with Amanda, we are told, in agonizing detail, about vampires, hunters, and daimons. I wish the information had been relayed in a more engaging way – all of the explanations only served to bring the story to a screeching halt.
The art is uneven as well. It’s engaging at the beginning of the book, offering up action, comedy, and blisteringly steamy gazes between Kyrian and Amanda. At other times, it seems rushed and unfinished. Like all of the word balloons, there is a general feeling of cramped panels and an overload of images crammed onto the pages. With its smaller trim size, everything seems squished together. I do find the cover very compelling, as Kyrian glares at the reader, a bloody blade clutched in his hand. It made me want to read the book.
I’m not sure that I buy into turning every popular franchise into a manga version of itself, but if it gets more people reading comics, I’m not going to complain too much. The Dark Hunters is fairly entertaining, but it’s marred by typos, uneven plotting, and inconsistent artwork. I have a weakness for paranormal romances, so I hope that the next volume settles down and delivers a more cohesive reading experience.
Grade: C+
Review copy provided by St Martin’s Griffin
August 7, 2009 at 8:09 am
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August 14, 2009 at 1:12 am
I have read all the Darkhunters series, and was pretty happy to hear there was a manga version coming out.Pluses: love the superdeformed moments of Amanda…Tabitha is exactly how she is described in the book…fun! Talon, Kyrian character models were pretty cool. Loved the look of Apollo.Minuses: character design of Nick Gautier (um..isn’t he supposed to be a black cajun hottie?), Julien (he’s a sex god, but looks like an average joe with short hair? I mean Desiderius looked hotter than Julien T__T), and poor Aphrodite…she looked old instead of the hot cougar we know she can be.Nitty gritty (with mild spoilers):I agree with this review poster as to the uneven artwork, the first and the last part of the book had very nice stylized character renderings but the middle where Amanda and Kyrian goes to see Julien, sees Nick, fights bad daimons were drawn too simply or not consistent with the character models. For example, compare the Julien model to the first half Kyrian model and you will notice a drastic difference between renderings…it’s almost as if the middle was rushed through for deadlines’ sake. And there were panels that were duplicated to indicate time lapses but it looked like a mistake, or worse a filler for no reason…(japanese mangas generally have textured filler panels but rarely an exact duplicated scene paneled next to each other). And in the books, Amanda and Kyrian were sexually intimate together, but you don’t get that at the end of this manga volume because there’s no apparent connection between their kissing and then the next panel, they’re in full clothing in bed together?! Huh? Did I miss something? Did they have sex…or something? I think what would have been better in terms of moving the story sequences, would have been to prequel the entire story with the explanation of Apollo/Apollites/Daimons…and have it seque to Kyrian kicking some butt…flash to chapter one with Amanda. This way we don’t have the long explanation by Kyrian in the middle…and come on! The best parts of Kenyon’s books are the steamy elements, which generally goes past the PG-13 kisses viewed in the manga **think Red River for steamy reference…for more graphic go for Sensual Phrase**I know it’s difficult to adapt books to graphic novelization, but if you read enough mangas, you do understand that mangas show plot points and story movements with a minimal of details in a few panels, as opposed to books that have to detail everything out to the last bit in every paragraph. I pray future adaptations will work out all the kinks. I have hope that once Ash and Simi hits the scene, it will get sexier or hotter, whichever one comes first. p.s. Pluses: saw the cover for Volume 2, Lovely artwork especially Ash, Simi & Artemis! Hopefully it delivers in the new volume.