THE LAST HUNTER
Book One: Blood Ascension
by Bobby Cinema
This first installment in Cinema’s supernatural thriller saga follows a former monster hunter who’s reluctantly pulled back into the fray when he uncovers a villain’s plan for a massacre.
Alex Carter is a construction executive and bestselling writer living in Oxnard, California, who, years earlier, was an elite hunter of supernatural horrors. Now, all he wants is to live a life of routine, regularity, and mundanity. (“New day. Normal life…No monsters. No chaos…Maybe pancakes.”) But when corpses begin turning up with similar puncture wounds, Alex knows instinctively that the killings aren’t random but are part of a much larger, more organized conspiratorial plot. With the help of Oxnard detective Marcus Vale and old friend Ryan, a library archivist, Alex begins to put the pieces together. Organized crime kingpin Victor Kane is preparing his supernatural army of baddies for a “mass feeding” to complete an ancient ritual known as the Blood Ascension that will, if successful, open up a portal to another dimension. This “rift gate,” as it’s called, will create a pathway for all of Kane’s minions to enter Southern California and ultimately subjugate its earthly inhabitants.
This highly palatable mélange of supernatural fiction and gritty noir thriller will appeal to fans of the television series The X-Files and the 1970s cult favorite Kolchak: The Night Stalker. Cinema delivers darkly atmospheric old-school monster hunting: “The large table at the center of the room was now covered in gear. Wooden stakes. Crosses. Bottles of treated water. Blades and improvised weapons, alongside a few modern additions that didn’t belong in any history book.” The stripped-down, staccato nature of Cinema’s writing style—very reminiscent of the early works of James Ellroy—initially works well in the noir-thriller mode; the short, fragmented sentences generate pedal-to-the-metal pacing and page-turning action sequences. However, the skeletal approach—an admirably bold choice—ultimately leads to a decidedly two-dimensional reading experience. Description is all but nonexistent; the supernatural entities, for example, are barely characterized. Are they vampires? Lycanthropes? Demonic aliens? (“The man’s expression shifted—subtle at first, then unmistakably wrong. His eyes darkened, his jaw tightened, and his fangs slid into place.”) The characters display very little depth, internally or externally, leaving readers with a lack of emotional connection and numerous significant questions: Do Alex and his longtime friend Ryan work for an agency, or are they independent freelancers? Is secondary character Lena Carter Alex’s wife, sister, cousin, or other? What made Alex walk away from monster hunting? Is Alex’s bestselling book (titled The Last Hunter) fiction or autobiographical? Narrative clarity should be a primary goal for all genre writers, and leaving readers consistently confused is a conspicuous red flag. The novel does end with a satisfying teaser that could go in virtually limitless directions, setting up the sequel nicely: “Alex looked out over the city. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I tried to leave this life…Turns out it wasn’t done with me.’”Courageous but questionable writing decisions make this otherwise compelling story feel rushed and unfinished.