I Come with Knives starts without any preamble. We are thrown into a flashback or telling of something that happened in the past. At first I was a bit surprised and I was scrambling to remember the characters from the first volume. I had been nine months since I read Burn the Dark. Then as the chapter progressed I thought, “this is really good.” Then I wondered as we switched back to where the story left off, if that was a mistake? If it would make it harder to get into it? It didn’t.
Several times during the first half and the last quarter I found myself thinking, “Hunt is a really good writer.” The descriptions were good and the characters were good. The third quarter got a little weird and it seemed like the story dragged a bit, but it picked back up.
So, from the first book we know Robin, the YouTube celebrity witch hunter. She’s come home to take on the coven that killed her mother. The first book ended with a big fight where Robin had managed to kill one of the witches, but there were several left. One has the sense that Robin is outclassed. After all, she is just in her early twenties and the witches have been at it for, well, who knows how long. Also, Robin meets up with the Dogs of Odysseus, a group of magic wielders, and it is not clear if they are going to get along. However, Robin has her friends and isn’t one to back down.
I listened to the audio book version of I Come with Knives. The reader, Eva Kaminsky, was great, the book was mostly fast paced, very creative, and fun. I’ve seen the series referred to as horror, and I could see that, especially in a movie, but I didn’t find it scary. Good author, good story, good series.