The Last Hunt

I waited a long, long time to finish reading Cara Diana Hunter's story.  As I've mentioned in previous posts, I started reading the Unicorn Chronicles when the first book came out in 1994.  Now, almost twenty years later, I finally know what happened when Beloved invaded Luster with her army of Hunters.

Egged on by the Whisperer, Beloved has torn a new hole into Luster.  This hole is through the Axis Mundi, the world tree that holds Luster togethe. In damagin it, the world is very quickly falling apart.

With the arrival of the Hunters, Cara is sent to one of the seven dragons for help.  The Unicorn Council, led by the new queen Amalia Flickerfoot, has decided that Graumag is the best choice.  Graumag is an unusual dragon (she is actually the same dragon from "After the Third Kiss;" it was rather fun being able to make that connection), one who owes her very life to Luster and so she agrees to help. 

But after enlisting the dragon's aid, Cara and Graumag are attacked by Hunters who were tasked by Beloved to capture Cara.  Graumag holds them off while Cara escapes, thus seperating Cara from all of her friends (except the Squijum).  Cara is left to find her way to the Axis Mundi where the largest battle to ever be fought on Luster's soil is about to begin.

I enjoyed reading The Last Hunt quite a bit (well I did manage to get through all 600 pages yesterday).  But I did miss some of the characters.  As always Cara is the main character, so we got to follow her through most of the story.  But many of the other characters did not play as big a role in this book as they have in previous ones and that made me sad.  For one thing I often found myself wondering what Lightfoot was up to.  And near the end of the book I found that the focus shifted away from Cara's father Ian which was a real shame; Coville set some great character things up for him in the third book (especially concerning what he had to go through in the Rainbow Prison to find his wife) which seemed forgotten about in the Last Hunt.  And I think the very end, wrapping up what had happened, needed a little more (I don't want to give this away in any more detail  as that is a spoiler).  But besides these issues, it was an interesting (and enjoyable!) book and I'm glad to finally know how Cara's story ended.