The characters are fantasy, but the setting is as real as it gets

Martyr's Promise: A Paranormal Mystery Novel (Elemental Covenant Book 2) by Elizabeth Hunter.

I’ve been reading Elizabeth Hunter’s paranormal novels since A Hidden Fire which came out in 2011. I discovered them a year later, and from Amazon’s records, proceeded to read them over Christmas break that year back-to-back. They may well have been the first vampire books I read. I resisted paranormal books for a long time preferring science fiction to urban fantasy. But then I succumbed. Shifters first: Ilona Andrews. Patricia Briggs. Anne Bishop. And then Elizabeth Hunter and her vampires.

Those authors are still all on my buy the newest without looking list.

But I am particularly intrigued by this one, the second in a new, spin-off series, for two reasons: one is the setting she creates so well, and the second is the category it’s found a niche in: paranormal mysteries.

This is a spin-off series from the original one. What does a 1000-year-old vampire do when he falls in love with a human who is turned into a vampire to prevent her death and resents it? After a lot of angst (prior to this series), they decide there is a need for detectives and problem solvers in the vampire world. And their skills and powers allow them to cross territory boundaries to do that.

In this one, a young couple has gone missing in Humboldt County, California. Although neither are vampires, the young woman has a connection to an old vampire family and they ask Brigid and Carwyn to investigate.

Elizabeth Hunter turns the region into a character in its own right. The old growth forest, the paranoid pot growers — she captures it and serves it to us. This book couldn’t happen anywhere else.

And that’s how it should be.

Too often books are plopped down in a setting, often a disguised one because beginning writers are discouraged from using real places. (What?) And the setting becomes a generic city. A rural town becomes quaint because it isn’t a specific rural town. E. Hunter’s characters may be fantasy, but her setting is real, and it makes the story richer, deeper because of it.

It’s something I seek to do with my books. Texas, Alaska, Seattle, Portland, and Moscow, Idaho — I want each place to become real to my readers, as real as the characters themselves. And this book showed what that looks like when it’s done well.

It’s also just a great mystery, btw.

As an author, I’m also intrigued that Amazon now has a mystery/suspense category called paranormal suspense, and it’s broken down further into vampires and separately shifters. Readers have gotten very specific is their book tastes, and Amazon tries to satisfy that with categories it creates so people can find the books they’re looking for.

This November’s writing project is a bit of a stretch for me into the paranormal world, a paranormal mystery called Alpha Female. (My NaNoWriMo project). Still a mystery/thriller though. It will be out this spring sometime, and it will be in the sub-sub-category of paranormal mystery. Who knows? Maybe it will find its place next to one of Elizabeth Hunter’s books one day.

It would be an honor.