Hunt's paragraphs are littered with phrases equally as tired, banal, or just plain overused in the context of the book itself, and the result is narrative that reads like someone's NaNoWriMo effort--forever striving to fill the page and reach a word count, without actually providing any content. It has the depressing side effect of drawing attention away from a truly rich and complex world. I would have liked to know much more about the kingdom of Jackals and its neighbors, but [i:]Court[/i:] offered only a glimpse in favor of devoting maximum attention to a plot that tries, and fails, to be epic. We're not given an opportunity to develop a connection with the world Hunt builds, so I can't get too torn up about the possibility of it being destroyed. Same goes for the characters.
In the third act, however, the distractive power of the amateurish writing is overshadowed by a jumbled calamity of a revolutionary battle. There are entirely unscary Mesoamerican-style gods, ineffectual arrivals of reinforcements during combat a la Pelennor Fields, and honest to God cybermen, straight out of [i:]Doctor Who[/i:]'s crappiest season finales. The characters that survive get their stories wrapped up in a neat little package, in some cases, and are completely abandoned in others.
To see a book with so much potential fail so utterly in the last pages was truly depressing. However, it appears there's still hope for future installments: Hunt's two spinoff works aim much lower as far as grandiose plots are concerned, which bodes well for finding out more about the world introduced in [i:]Court[/i:]. I fully intend to pick up [i:]The Kingdom Beyond the Waves[/i:], which (if the sample chapter is any indication) models the feel and style of a penny dreadful. I have a feeling such pulpy subject matter will suit Hunt's writing much better.]]>