In this dazzling sequel to the bestselling Hunting the Hunter, Shiloh Walker returns to tell the story of another unique hero at the heart of a strange new world...
HIS MISSION Vax was once committed to his life as a Hunter, tracking down the evil beings who preyed on humans, but he opted out of the game long ago. Now, he is pulled back in——because somebody, somewhere, is in danger. And, despite his best efforts, Vax can't ignore his calling...
HER SACRIFICE Jess Warren is determined to find the maniac who killed her sister. A gifted psychic and telekinetic, she will do anything to exact her vengeance. Even if it means putting herself in peril...
THEIR INSATIABLE DESIRE Jess would rather not accept Vax's help——especially since letting him have his way could draw her deeper into his irresistibly sensuous realm. But then he saves her life——and they discover that the depraved madman they've been looking for is much closer than either of them could have imagined...
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And an experimental me that I put to sleep. J. Dallas
Bio...
Shiloh Walker has been writing since she was a kid. She fell in love with vampires with the book Bunnicula and has worked her way up to the more...ah...serious vampire stories. She loves reading and writing anything paranormal, anything fantasy, and nearly every kind of romance. Once upon a time she worked as a nurse, but now she writes full time and lives with her family in the Midwest.
I was amused at the name: Vax is a character in a D&D game i watch on youtube, only *that* Vax is a half-elf rogue assassin paladin. Both Vaxes though have one thing in common - they exhibit TSTL behavior. In this case, the heroine called it; Vax is a stupid jerk.
The h is an investigative reporter with telekinetic abilities. She noted something suspicious about a series of rape/murders and started poking her nose in. She got too close and one of them grabbed her little sister, killed her. Now she's on a mission and she doesn't care if she survives it as long as the bad guys go down.
Vax, introduced a few books ago, is a witch. He's also a retired Hunter because reasons, and he's been wearing that hair shirt for nearly 100 years. He gets the Call, and goes to investigate.
He manages to rescue her, they do some discussing, the bad guys send a mutant after her, he rescues her again, while capturing the mutant. They take said mutant to other Hunters...and here's where it starts to get shaky. If there's one, there's bound to be others. They have names. They know there's a vampire involved. They go back to finish it without anyone coming along as aid (why?) his restocking (or stocking up as the case may be) the silver nitrate, etc. Then they find the lab, go down there, have a confrontation, and run. He manages to get beneath her shields (finally), knocking her out, and goes back after them, alone. He also sends a message to the Hunters he'd talked to before. SOMEhow, he survives it, but the vampire manages to give him something that destroys his powers, and the female witch (whose book I haven'd read, because I don't have it) senses it, but doesn't try to extract it.
Actually, considering they both were flyers, I don't get why she didn't poof them both out and work on him outside. I don't get a lot of things though, like if he was able to explode the vampire, why he didn't do that in the first place? And if the h had a gun loaded with silver bullets, why the hell didn't she shoot? And if he was a flyer, why didn't he poof behind the various mutants and slash them with his fancy silver knife? There's a hell of a lot that does NOT make sense in this one. It's like the abilities were ignored to draw the book out.
Now for the "romance" bit. He tells the h upfront that he's not into relationships. She tells him she doesn't do casual and pushes him away. Eventually though, they end up horizontal. He picks up on her lack of a will to live and yet... after everything goes down (and they both miraculously survive it), he's an insensitive jerk, telling her to go get herself a life. I kinda wonder how he'd have felt if, when he went back to apologize, he'd found she'd offed herself. She didn't though. She was pissed off, and punched him at least once. I thought perhaps she should have used her powers and shoved him out a window, or whacked him upside the head with a lamp.
The moment her sister was brutally raped and murdered as a threat to the heroine because she was investigating the recent deaths, the heroine’s life ceased as well. The only thing that stopped her from killing herself and welcoming the darkness was her thirst for revenge. She quit her job, she quit eating really other the bagels and coffee, and she devoted herself to finding the ones responsible and putting them in the ground. It's been some time but she's finally managed to track down her target and he's in her sights.... Only she's interrupted by a witch with stormy gray eyes and a handsome face.
The hero quit her job as a hunter after the death of his wife. Death, like it was an accident. Actually, he was the one to kill her. After she was turned by a feral Vampire, she was no longer his wife and to save her and others, he had to put her down. But he lives with the regret and the pain every day of his long life. When he receives a call that someone is in danger, he answers it, despite him being retired. Perhaps, he acknowledges to himself, he missed the job and the purpose behind it. But when he comes across the heroine, he begins to see his mission as something far more dangerous. You think she'd be thankful considering he just saved her life. But no, the feisty human with astonishing psychic powers is combative and determined to endanger her life. He has to knock her out to prevent her from going back for more. Now, he's promised her to help her get her revenge while at the same time putting a stop to the horrible mutated creatures an evil source is creating.
The heroine doesn't have time for sex let allow romance. The hero makes it clear he's not offering anything special or long term but she's afraid that her heart can accept nothing else. The chemistry between them is just too powerful to ignore. Despite him being arrogant and annoying, she finds him extremely sexy and powerful. But after their first sexual encounter, he turns cold. The hero closes himself off emotionally because he fears falling for this woman. He can't allow himself to love again and if it means being an asshole to protect the heroine, then he's willing to be. As their quest takes them from the state to state in search of a monster farm, the heroine and hero must come to terms with what life truly means and discover what they want out of it.
I have quite a few Shiloh Walker novels in my library and when I took the time to acknowledge them this season, I realized that I did not remember anything about them. Granted I read them some time ago but I usually have a spark of some particular scene that will stick out for me.... Nothing. As I read this book, I became to realize why. This was very uneventful. I struggled to read this book for many reasons but the most glaring con was the lackluster and horribly repetitive writing style. The author would harp on one particular thing again and again until I went cross eyed from boredom. The wolf-witch creature, I cannot say without wanting to hurt something, how many times each and every single character would tell the reader how unnatural the beast was. Every single freakin’ character? Really, I get the point. Why don't we move on to something else? Why don't you evolve these characters a bit more instead of having them wandering the American country side, sleeping in motels and bitching about coffee?
Other things disturbed me as well. The hero was a massive asshole for treating the heroine the way he did. On 2 separate occasions he berated her and made her feel useless all because of his own insecurities towards their growing relationship. We'll not talk about the fact that the hero knocks the heroine out with a left hook upon their first meeting or the fact that the heroine repeatedly punched him in the face. I'm not a violence phobic but neither can I stomach open violence between men and woman. I was not interested in this book at all. I found it hard to read and even harder to become invested in. I'm worried the rest of the series will proceed in such a fashion.
Hunters Salvation is the 10th book in the Hunter series. I have only read one other book in this series but each on is a standalone so you can skip around and not lose anything. Our hero Vax is a witch and an empathy, he used to be a hunter but after loosing his wife he has retreated into solitude on his ranch in Montana. Jess is telekinetic, she is also a reporter who is determined to take out revenge on her sisters killer.
The premise of the story was ok and as I was reading I kept asking myself why am I not into this book? It has interesting characters who have new and interesting gifts what is wrong. Well about half way through I decided the first thing that bothered me was Jess she was just annoying and I did not care for Vax pushing her away ‘for her own good”. I get reluctance and that actually can work but ¾ of the book in you are still pushing her away. Then on top of that they are avoiding their individual issues. I think it just caused me to lose interest and by the end I just wanted to know what happened to the bad guy.
As such I was not a fan of this book but the other one I read was great so I think this was just a dud.
When Jess got too close to a story involving missing women, her sister was abducted and murdered. Bent now on revenge, Jess goes to the club she suspects is the locus of the activity. There, she’s thwarted in her effort to get close to the inner circle by a man who saves her and warns her to stay away, but there’s no way in hell she’s going to let this go. Vax has given up on being a Hunter, but when a call comes he responds, not realizing that the woman he just saved will become so important to him so quickly. He tries to keep Jess out of the fray, but she is determined to avenge her sister. It will take the two of them working together, along with some help from other Hunters, to take out the monsters who’ve been preying on young women.
Oof. This was well written and compelling, but I didn’t like it. I prefer urban fantasy with some humor, and this was nothing but grim and gritty. I could have done without the instant love, too. More like instant lust, which, fine, but don’t try to put a romantic spin on it. Vax spent most of the book being an arrogant he-man asshole, and Jess was too stupid to live, in my opinion. Once she learned there were real monsters behind the crimes, she needed to step back and let the professional(s) handle it. Characterizations were good but not top-notch. The plot zipped in some places and plodded in others. Worst of all, the final showdown didn’t live up to the build-up.
It took forever to read this because it didn’t hold my interest. I can see where it would appeal to others, however. But, I’m not scoring it any higher than average.
From the previous book, I thought Vax was an interesting character. From this one he might have been, had the POV not jumped from one unnecessary person to another, and another, and another. It was distracting and pulled me out of the story, such as it was.
And the word “sexy” was used too frequently. Find a different descriptor.
This is only the second Hunters book I've read and it's obviously out of order. Still, I felt like I got caught up to speed very quickly in Walker's world of witches, vampires, shifters and mortals. Vax is a 200 something year old witch who was a hunter (non-mortals who hunt down and eliminate evil non-mortals) for a mere 50 years before a shattering loss caused him to leave the ranks of hunters and avoid emotional attachments as much as possible. For the past 100 years, he has kept largely to himself though he has a few friends. He is "called" in hunter fashion to the aid of the mortal Jess. She is dealing with her own crushing losses and wanting to bring justice to the sadistic killers of her sister.
The two are emotional walking wounded but connect with each other warily and reluctantly. Vax can be quite the jerk in his efforts to keep Jess from getting too close and falling in love with her himself. You couldn't help but sympathize with and root for these lost souls, Vax especially since he was a lost sould for 100 years when he met Jess.
Malachi and Kelsey, from an early story make a couple appearances in the book and Mal is very much a scene stealer. I want to get to his story in the near future. I had a couple quibbles about Jess. One, she punched Vax at least a few times out of sheer temper, not because she was protecting herself. That bugged me. The other thing I didn't like was the repeated references to how she little she ate. This was often contrasted to Vax who ate more than the average man/witch. She was described as very lean, but from the descriptions of Jess' meals (an apple or a bagel or coffee and I can't recall anything that hinted at protein) I couldn't imagine how she had the strength to walk any length of time, much less help fight off very bad non-mortals.
Otherwise, it was a good story of two wounded people falling in love. The villians were impressively evil and the fast moving plot provided a good deal of action. I am liking this author more and more.
"Hunter's Salvation" by Shiloh Walker. Book 11 in The Hunters series.
I really liked this book. The themes of vengence and self-forgiveness are very strong throughout the storyline. The main characters, Vax and Jess (Jessica), each deal with very traumatic events in their past.
Vax is a witch and ex-Hunter, but he still gets the feeling now and then that someone needs his help. But Vax thinks himself a failure because of a horrible event; he wasn't there to save someone he loved. He never wants to feel that pain again so he doesn't let himself get attached to anyone and he never sticks around long enough for anyone to get attached to him. And now he feels the call again, someone needs help and he's the only one close enough to offer help. But how is he supposed the help Jess if she doesn't want him to?
Jess wants vegence against the man who brutally raped and murdered her sister a year ago. She'll do whatever it takes to make him pay. Even if it costs her own life. Vax thinks he can stop her from accomplishing her self-imposed mission. But he has another think coming. Nothing will stop her. Not Vax, not the horrible creatures hunting her, not even the threat of death.
The emotional termoil Vax and Jess go through is so heartbreaking. Both blaming themselves for the tragedies in their pasts. You can't help but feel for them and want them to help each other with their emotions. The connection between the two was excellent. The descriptions throughout the book were so life-like you could picture exactly what was happening and what the creatures in the book look like. Overall, a really good storyline. I really enjoyed it.
first shiloh walker book i read. it's pretty good. there are vampires, shifters, sorcerer and a telekinetic in this story.
jess is a telekinetic wanting to avenge her sister's death. vax was once a hunter who was devoted on keeping everyone in good's side but then his own wife was raped and turned as a vampire who can't control her appetite and in the end he has to kill her. he was also a sorcerer who happens to be jess rescuer since her sister's killers happened to be the ones responsible for the other gifted's death; jess was in danger. and vax would do everything so jess wouldn't meet the same fate his wife did.
when vax lose his powers in saving jess, he pushed jess away even if he saw hope between them, even if jess made him feel alive again. now, it is jess turn to push on the things she want. and vax is the no. 1 on her list.
This is the only Hunters book I've read and I probably wouldn't have read it at all if I hadn't seen it to buy from the library's book sale for only 50c. I have read one other Walker book, but that was nothing like this in style or quality. Hunter's Salvation gives the new reader enough background information to understand the relevant history without creating a feeling of backstory replay overload in the devoted fan. It made me want to go back to the beginning of the series so I could understand everything, especially the lore, much more fully.
In this dazzling sequel to the bestselling novel Hunting the Hunter, Shiloh Walker returns to tell the story of another unique hero at the heart of a strange new world. [br/]Vax was once committed to his life as a Hunter, tracking down the evil beings who prey on humans, but he opted out of the game long ago. Now, somebody, somewhere, is in danger. And, despite his best efforts, Vax can't ignore his calling. [br/][br/]I love everyone of her books. Want a book quick try an e-book,you get it right away. And she has several of them all very hot reads!![br/]
As much as I like Vax this was a disappointing second book. I didn't love the female lead. Yes she had every reason to be pissed off but she wasn't very badass and after a while her chip on her shoulder just pissed me off! The killing of the badies was almost moot point. I remember thinking "wait what happened?" That was too easy/quick anti climatic. The book started out strong dispite the heroin but failed to deliver as it did in the1st book.
Once again Shiloh Walker delivers a great story. Vax as a male witch - Hello! - and the idea of experimentation on paranormals to build an army - great! Even some of the bad guys had qualities that almost made them likeable - which is when you know you stumbled upon great writing. Can't wait to find out whats next in the series
This book was about Vax and who he is. As a retired Hunter, he still is drawn to a problem with ferals and, of course, meets the woman he is going to fall in love with. I am still perplexed at how intricate and well written some of the Hunters series are, and then the Ellora's Cave versions, which are kind of cheesy. This is one of the better ones.
Jess (Jessica) Warren, a psychic & telekinetic, is searching for those who filmed the rape & murder of her younger sister. A message to her to stop investigating multiple disappearances in the area. Her investigation brings her to a sex club and encounters Vax.
Vax is a former Hunter, part Indian, and a powerful witch.
The story of a male witch and a woman with telekinesis. They join together to hunt down her sister's murderers, one of whom is a vampire. Good plot, much more of a suspense/urban fantasy with some smut (no vampire smutting, just witch/human) thrown in.
This was not one of my favourites of this series. I found it dragged a lot in parts and didn't really feel the chemistry between the two main characters. I was also disappointed with the ending although it made a lot more sense.
Vax really surprised me. I'm not sure if I'm lovin how Vax's life turned out. I expected a different out come. Still a great read. Not disappointed at all.