Huntress is a GORGEOUS book. It’s beautifully written and exciting and magical. However, romance fans should know that the ending is bittersweet, and while I can accept a bittersweet ending in fantasy (this is marketed as fantasy, not romance) it felt unfinished. I keep looking for a missing chapter, or, better yet, a sequel.

Here’s the publisher’s intro to the plot:

Nature is out of balance in the human world. The sun hasn’t shone in years, and crops are failing. Worse yet, strange and hostile creatures have begun to appear. The people’s survival hangs in the balance.

To solve the crisis, the oracle stones are cast, and Kaede and Taisin, two seventeen-year-old girls, are picked to go on a dangerous and unheard-of journey to Tanlili, the city of the Fairy Queen. Taisin is a sage, thrumming with magic, and Kaede is of the earth, without a speck of the otherworldly. And yet the two girls’ destinies are drawn together during the mission. As members of their party succumb to unearthly attacks and fairy tricks, the two come to rely on each other and even begin to fall in love. But the Kingdom needs only one huntress to save it, and what it takes could tear Kaede and Taisin apart forever.

Most of the book takes place on the journey to Tanlilil, although the climax happens after they get there and there’s a lot of fallout that takes place on the way home. Road trip adventures in any genre are great because they force people, some of whom may be very different from one another, to spend a lot of time together. All of the members of the group, not just Kaede and Taisin, have great friendship chemistry with each other, and in addition to the Kaede/Taisin pairing there is a very sweet romance between Prince Con and Shae (a guard), who have a chance to fall in love because no one gets to be royalty when everyone is sleeping on the ground by the same fire. In addition to the romances, this is a just an enjoyable group of people to spend time with, and their various relationships unfold organically as the story takes its time on the road. I’m going to be using words like “natural” and organic” a lot in this review because it was that sense of calm flow, of realness, that stuck with me.

I must warn readers, though, that while this is an enjoyable group of people to spend time with, they share some truly awful experiences including a horribly disturbing battle with a monster that disguises itself as a human baby when it isn’t a giant predator from Hell. The violence in this story is frequent and graphic, although I’m thrilled to say that there is no sexual violence that I recall.

The romance between Kaede and Taisin is both fore-ordained and slightly fore-doomed. Taisin has a vision in which she loves Kaede – whom she hasn’t met yet. So when they do meet, it’s super awkward for a long time because Taisin has all these future feelings. There’s no big drama with the development of the feelings between the two; it feels like a beautiful and natural outcome of the trip.

The language of the book is lovely – lyrical and at the same time totally tactile. It’s worth reading just for moments like this:

She was no longer in her body; she felt free. She was as small as a drop of dew quivering on a spider’s web; she was a minute in an hour in a day in a million years.

and:

Kaede told herself that what she felt was only a little seed; she would simply not water it. It wouldn’t grow any larger than this tiny prickle of attraction. She wouldn’t let it.

But that night after everyone had left, and they had all spread their blankets on the floor of the hall, Kaede lay awake for some time, trying to make out the sound of Taisin’s breathing in the dark.

Part of what makes the book feel both very traditional (hero’s quest) and very fresh is the fact that it’s not the same hero’s quest we’ve seen a million times before. It centers women as both heroines and villains, the central romance is between two women and is not tragic, and it uses Chinese imagery and themes that, even if I can’t always recognize the larger context or history, I know seems new to me. I’ve argued before that inclusion in books isn’t just a morally good practice, it’s something that I, and suspect most readers, selfishly desire, (in the good sense of “selfish”) because it leads to richer and more interesting storytelling.

This is more of a fantasy with a lot of romance than a romance novel, and the ending is bittersweet, which frankly I did not see coming. I could handle the bittersweet ending (since it’s not marketed as a romance novel) if it didn’t seem so abrupt. Most of the book is slow paced and then we get to the chapter where everyone takes off and does their own thing and it left me going, “Wait, what? What about Con and Shae? What about the rest of the kingdom? What the freaking hell, Taisin and Kaede?”

A sad ending or a bittersweet ending can be satisfying if it’s an honest progression for the plot and character growth and gives a true resolution of the story. Exhibit A is, of course, the ending of The Return of the King by Tolkien, and Exhibit B is The Amber Spyglass by Phillip Pullman which had me crying so hard that my husband edged into the room, said, “Um, you know…well, you know it’s fiction, right?” and then fled as I hurled tissues at him.

Everything is poised for one more chapter, one more step of character development, but it doesn’t happen.

I did love this book, but the end left me feeling frustrated and twitchy. I recommend this for people looking for inclusive fantasy that feels at once fresh and traditional within multiple traditions. But I can’t fully recommend it to romance readers, because either, like me, you’ll refuse to believe that the romance is fully resolved, which is frustrating, or you will accept that it is fully resolved and be sad. Approach with care.