I scored a copy of this book at my library's book sale. I immediately started reading and am reminded why I loved this series so much!

Maxine Kiss, the Hunter, is figuring out who she is and where she fits in the big picture. She has always known she's a Hunter, her mother taught her that she will kill demons until the ones that inhabit her skin move on to protect her daughter, at which point Maxine will die. But whoa, in Darkness Calls she goes up against a powerful Avatar, the Earl King.

The secondary characters are pulled into Maxine's story more in book two. Mary, the crazy old lady living at Grant's shelter, has a great history. She'll fight till the end. And Maxine's grandfather, Jack, the Old Wolf, reveals more about what he is and what he did to her bloodline. Maxine and Grant pick up Killy, a young lady who can read minds, and to keep her alive from the demons and the Catholic church, she is now stuck with them.

There is really a lot going on but the plot maintains focus on Maxine and everything flows. I adore Liu's writing and her ability to fill a moment with heavy emotions. Now I NEED to re-read the rest of this series! I want more Maxine and Grant!

The second in the Hunter Kiss books. The story gets more in depth and deals with the demon prison breaking down and the only one who can stop is is Maxine.

"you are afraid of the darkness that sleeps so lightly in your heart. more afraid of yourself than the end of the world."

"fascinating," i replied, but i would have said the same if he told me he liked to dress up as a chipmunk and juggle acorns.

"the most powerful person in a room isnt the wealthiest or the one with the most connections. it's the person who believes the strongest, the one who has the most confidence. and, sometimes, it's the person who can make everyone else feel like less of themselves."

"everything we are, everything we become, is born of what we believe ourselves to be."

"she thought it would make her special. special enough that people would love her."

I'm just guessing the year I read this - I just decided to add it b/c I'm considering reading the first book in the series at some point - and I want this one to register this one as read just in case I do :P

Overall I remember it being a good book - I enjoyed it quite a lot - I thought the power was interesting the plot was fast paced and interesting

I like that this book resolved some of the mysteries of the previous one - the mythology of this series has the potential to be overwhelming if everything is left up in the air. At the same time, there are enough things left unexplained or in a state of flux to provide conflict for the next book.

This review is a work in progress. I am having trouble focusing, and so am writing it in pieces. I am, however, completely focused on not starting the next book in the series until I get this review written! I may need to reread part of this book again before I can finish it, but hopefully it will be done today. :)

(Please note that in addition to not having it finished yet, I also have not yet proofread it. Please forgive any spelling/grammar errors. I'll catch them before I finalize the review, promise!)

The following spoiler includes some of the questions (in italics) I was left with after finishing book one, [b:The Iron Hunt|2281814|The Iron Hunt (Hunter Kiss, #1)|Marjorie M. Liu|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1388187239s/2281814.jpg|2288010]. These are the questions that were answered in this second book, as well as some other spoilers I feel the need to make about what I read. :)

What exactly is Maxine? Is Jack Meddle truly her grandfather? Is she what she is because he's an Avatar?
Maxine is apparently somewhat a mystery to everyone, though it did seem as if Mr. King recognized the darkness that lives inside her. Jack truly is her grandfather, but even he doesn't know if his being an Avatar in human skin somehow gave Maxine that darkness.

The armor Maxine brought back from the labyrinth originally belonged to one of her ancestors. This ancestor was driven mad from either overuse of its transformative properties or from not being strong enough to handle these properties. The armor not only acts as a weapon; it also gives Maxine the ability to travel into the past and from place to place. It grows after each use. When Maxine first brought it back, it was a ring. Now it encases the whole of her right ring finger and threads up to connect to a bracelet around her right wrist. When it's a sword, the sword is connected by chain to the bracelet.

Update: The Avatars actually gave the boys to Maxine's line. Hers was the first, and after giving that first Warden the demons, it was considered too dangerous and unpredictable to do again. (So Jack explained later in this book.)

I'm beginning to suspect that Oturu has something to do with the darkness that's in Maxine, and that the darkness is connected to/strengthened by the armor. I'm also beginning to suspect that the following questions are moot points:

Was it a vision or memory when Maxine saw herself/an ancestor with Oturu on a world with twin moons? I thought the seed ring was just her mother's memories. Has it instead been handed down through the generations from the first Hunter?

I now think that the seed ring was just her mother's memories, and the armor is a different type of seed ring: it, however, is linked to the boys. And so Maxine can visit memories of events the boys were witness to, whether they were tattoo or demon.

This supposition makes me think that Maxine's ancestor's bargain with Oturu was in exchange for the armor, and that the armor is demon-made. Were the boys being given to the Hunter line part of the bargain? After all, we now know that Maxine's line was originally counted among the Wardens. (According to Mr. King, her first ancestor was actually the first Warden the Avatars created.) But since Maxine's line is the only one still in existence, obviously not all the Wardens had demon companions/tattoos.

How did Oturu and Maxine's ancestor hook up? Why did they bargain together? And why was Maxine so comforted in his presence?

This book didn't give me answers to any of those three questions, but it did change them somewhat: How did Oturu connect with Maxine's Warden ancestor? Why did they bargain together and, if the Warden got the armor and/or the boys as her side of it, what did Oturu get? And why is Maxine so comfortable in his presence?

Why did Ahsen call Grant a Lightbringer? And why was she so afraid of him? Also, is she truly dead and gone?
Ahsen is truly dead and gone. This is both good and bad, though, since every Avatar that's left in existence can feel that she's dead, and so they might be after revenge against Maxine for killing her.

She called Grant a Lightbringer because his synesthesia (and his ability to change the souls of those he sings to) marks him as a non-human being. Jack explains that Lightbringers were the first humans. Until Maxine, they were thought to be the only beings who could give the Avatars true death. They were also thought to be dead, as the Avatars believed they had killed them all.

Grant somehow came to Earth from the Labyrinth. On their original world, his mother had extracted a promise from Mary to protect him. Mary is a nickname for Marritine. Jack rescued her from the Labyrinth and brought her to Maxine's world. Mary said she remembers Grant's mother and him being torn from her...Were they all three in the Labyrinth together and somehow Grant & his mother traveled to Earth while Mary was stuck behind?

This next spoiler contains questions left over from The Iron Hunt that I'm still hoping to find answers for in future books. :)

Why was Tracker so angry with Maxine and her Hunter ancestor? He mentioned being traded to Oturu in a bargain, but what was the bargain for and why was he the prize? Did he gain the power to teleport and withstand extreme cold in the bargain, or has he always had these abilities? What's with the iron collar around his throat?

Why did Tracker say he's Hunter's fool? Is this something to do with the Hunt? And why does Maxine have deja vu around Tracker?

How did Zee, Aaz, Raw, Dek and Mal first meet Byron? Were they in Sicily with Maxine's grandmother or another of her ancestors? Why did Raw kill Edik alone? What happened at that first meeting with Byron to make him care so much about him being hurt?

Why didn't her mother tell Maxine about what she would become? I suspect this is because she didn't know, as we found out in this book. So the question becomes. why didn't her mother tell Maxine that she was different? Also, why did her mother tear from her journal the pages that dealt with what happened the last time the veil opened?

And here are some entirely new questions I now have after finishing [b:Darkness Calls|5531637|Darkness Calls (Hunter Kiss, #2)|Marjorie M. Liu|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327943824s/5531637.jpg|5702670]:

How did Grant's mother and Mary get separated? Why was Mary stuck in the Labyrinth while the other two escaped to Maxine's world? Did Jack know who Mary was when he rescued her? What is Mary? Was she the other part of Grant's mother's heart-bond? Is their separation what drove her mad? All the hints we were given about her past in her moments of clear-headedness in this book drove me mad! :)

Great story with fantastic writing and refreshing character concepts. I can't wait for the next book in this series to come out.

Three and a half stars.

I found it even better than its predecessor, The Iron Hunt, however, it still suffers from some of the same narrative confusion. One of the less coherent parts of Lui's narrative is when she has Kiss, the lead character, unintentionally jumping through time and space. I think most of the confusion stems from Liu intentionally creating mysteries, in this case related to unknown abilities of a silver ring/sword she picked up in The Iron Hunt, but as a reader, it gets confusing as to where these abilities come from, why Kiss isn't more disturbed, are they under control, etc. There's a new challenge related to Grant's abilities, and why using them now is starting to cause extremely negative health effects. There's the mystery of Byron. And although the book is called Darkness Falls, there's only a little bit of mystery related to the "darkness" inside of Kiss.

It is a very action-oriented book, so there aren't many points where Kiss has an internal narrative that clues in the reader as to how she thinks about these things and what the implications may be. I do like the Kiss character, her strong sense of identity, her mission, and her awareness that falling in love with Grant changed a lot of the expectations she had for her life. Her relationship with "the boys" is unique and fun, and the characters around her are interesting, although all of them seem to have their own little "mysteries" surrounding them. Maybe that's a narrative device to keep us reading, wanting to learn more and to put the pieces of the puzzle together, but Lui's story could use a little more filling in, so that readers weren't so lost.

I found it more difficult to read this second book than the first book of the series; I think it's more my fault than the story, since when I did have time to read in big chunks, I was completely engrossed. But big chunks of time were limited the past few weeks, despite a week at the beach.

The story is just as confusing as before, and growing more so, with different (and more evil) classifications of other-worldly beings popping up left and right. What saves it from being too confusing is that Maxine is learning along with us: she doesn't have all the answers, and she's just as surprised by Avatars, etc, as we are. More than once, she laments the good ol' days and simpler times of only exorcising demons from their human hosts. But, as with all great paranormal stories, she is the most recent in a long line of defenders, whose mystery and complex existence unravels alongside the monster-of-the-week, which is always more than it seems.

Ultimately, it still combines my favorite things about Buffy, the Hollows, and the Fever series, and I'll continue reading about the adventures of Maxine and the boys.