The Hallowed Hunt

By: Lois McMaster Bujold

Narrated by: Marguerite Gavin

Length: 16 hrs and 23 mins

Publisher's summary

Lois McMaster Bujold returns to the vivid, perilous world of her previous masterworks, the Hugo Award-winning Paladin of Souls and Hugo and World Fantasy Award-nominated The Curse of Chalion, with this tale of devotion and strange destiny.

The half-mad Prince Boleso has been slain by a noblewoman he had intended to defile. It falls to Lord Ingrey kin Wilfcliff to transport the prince to his burial place and to bring the accused killer, Lady Ijada, to judgment. His mission is an ugly and delicate one, for the imminent death of the old Hallow King has placed the crown in play, and the road he travels with his burden and his prisoner is fraught with danger. But in the midst of political chaos, magic has the fiercer hold on Ingrey's destiny, and Ijada herself may turn out to be the only one he dares trust.

Don't miss Lois McMaster Bujold's other books about Chalion, The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls.

©2005 Lois McMaster Bujold (P)2007 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Inventive, with engaging characters and lively storytelling." (Denver Post)

"Bujold's reworking of a classic romantic situation is distinguished by its setting in a well-crafted world and masterly creation of characters whose fates will keep readers turning the pages." (Booklist)

"Absorbing....Bujold's ability to sustain a breathless pace of action while preserving a heady sense of verisimilitude in a world of malignant wonders makes this big novel occasionally brilliant and not a word too long." (Publishers Weekly)

great book, poor narrrator

McMaster-Bujold wrote a good novel, interesting characters one can care about and in the realm of the best book; The Curse of Chalion. This narrator's style is so annoying that it is hard to concentrate on the story. She ends each sentence as if it were a proclamation, or as if it were a question. When speaking as a character she was much better using normal acting skills to portray the character. This is the only narrator I have heard in about 100 Audible books that actively detracts from the book experience.

Animal Spirits, Ghosts, Gods, History, and Romance

The Hallowed Hunt (2005) begins with Lord Ingrey kin Wolfcliff (what a name!), high courier of the Royal Sealmaster, being sent to bring the corpse of Prince Boleso kin Stagthorne (!) from his hunting seat at (where else?) Boar's Head Castle back to the hallow king's hall at Easthome, along with the woman who killed him, Lady Ijada dy Castos (Holy Toledo!), so that he may be given funeral rites and she tried for murder. Ingrey soon discovers that the situation and his mission are complicated. Ijada brained the prince in self-defense with his handy war hammer when he was about to rape her (or worse) in a forbidden magic ritual, the spirit of a leopard the prince killed for the ritual has taken up residence inside Ijada, Ingrey's own wolf spirit similarly forced into him when he was a boy and suppressed for ten years is waking up, and something like a dark parasitic vine wrapped around Ingrey is telling him to kill Ijada. Will they make it to Easthome? Does Ingrey want to? Wouldn't he prefer the beautiful Lady Ijada to escape into the woods? He knows she'll likely be found guilty of murder, and he's attracted to her spirit, and he's also prone to hearing a voice say, 'Kill her!'

The story, Lois McMaster Bujold's third Chalion novel, occurs in the world of The Curse of Chalion (2001) and The Paladin of Souls (2003), but each of the books is stand alone, featuring different characters, settings, and stories. Here we are in the Weald, whose people practiced animal magic to infuse their warriors with the spirits of animals until 400 years ago, when the conquering Darthacans exterminated (nearly) all the spirit warriors, shamen, great beasts, and associated lore and imposed their own culture and Quintarian brand of the five-god religion (Mother, Father, Son, Daughter, Bastard) onto the Wealdings. Although 150 years ago the New Wealdings threw off Darthacan rule, they had mostly lost the 'forest song' and 'weirding' and spiritual animal affinity of the Old Wealdings--apart from their animal kin names. Currently most Wealdings, like Ingrey, see animal possession as defilement to burn away at the stake and reject the uncanny in favor of realpolitik to choose the next hallow king.

The novel has Bujold's many strengths: convincing and compelling characters (like Ingrey and Ijada and supporting ones like Wencel, Hallana, and Jokol), coherent and textured fictional world, unpredictable plot that makes sense as things happen and revelations come, neat similes ('He paused, feeling like a man crossing river ice in winter and hearing a first faint cracking sound coming from under his feet'), thoughtful themes (about people and nature, religion and politics, time and the divine, identity and history, free will and destiny, and so on), wit ('Could youth and fury outrun middle age and terror?'), and wisdom ('Death is not a performance to rate ourselves upon, or to berate ourselves upon either').

This novel avoids violent action scenes. Though Ingrey is a deadly fighter, given to battle rages and unorthodox martial techniques, we never see him perform, but instead occasionally hear a minor character marvel at his past exploits, as when one guy says he saw Ingrey in a melee with bandits toss his sword up in the air, break a big man's neck, catch the sword when it fell and behead another guy. But in this novel Ingrey fights battles of the spirit rather than of the flesh.

Perhaps Bujold's Chalion world, in which the five gods are very real, lends itself a bit too much to deus ex machina machinations (more than in her Vorkosigan universe), and she is capable of corny lines (cf the candlestick and scorching look one below), and sometimes her characters act stupidly (as when Ijada relates a vivid dream laden with portent and asks, 'Do you think it might have been significant?'), and in both her Vorkosigan and her Chalion books she does fixate on aristocrats. . . But I have listened to or read many of Bujold's novels, and always find them like this one to be involving and entertaining comfort food for the mind and body.

Marguerite Gavin's reading of the audiobook is good (apart from sometimes striving a bit too hard for dramatic effect by, for example, elongating some already long vowels). She speaks clearly and distinguishes subtly (maybe too subtly) among the characters, getting a little gruffer for men for instance. She's pleasant to listen to.

I recommend The Hallowed Hunt to fans of imaginative, fantasy with magic (e.g., 'its rumbling purr sawed through the air like some serrated song'), gods (e.g., 'A warm, autumnal voice murmured, somewhere between his ear and his mind'), romance (e.g., 'Ijada rose, snatched up her candlestick, gave Ingrey a look of scorching intensity, and fled up the stairs'), and bite (e.g., 'I fear I feel about horses much as I feel about wives, these days. They last such a short time and I am weary of butchering them.').

Dull

I liked the style Ms Bujold used in two books I this series. The plot grabbed you quickly, good use of character development and the relationships and interactions between the characters was plausible.
It is a personal irritation when a writer takes a series, and adds another book to the series and that book bears little relationship to the previous books.
A number of times I had to re-listen to a section because the reader and the story line were boring.
I finished the book but iI had to make myself do it.

Convoluted

A good story but very complicated. To catch all the nuances I had to go back and listen again - which is not a bad thing.
Another enjoyable listen and book from LMB.

a study in depression

Never act if you can imagine dying before action, seems to be the motto here. The book has higher points, but the low points are so depressing, and the fake-tragic voice of the narrator so tiresome, I heartily recommend you avoid this book.

Terrible narration, great book?

This may be the best of the “World of the Five Gods” series. It may be, but it’s hard to say, because the narrator was *awful*. Marguerite Gavin reads with exaggerated gravity, like she was giving a prophecy— or telling a ghost story to ten-year-olds around a campfire.

Her ponderous intonation actually obscures the meaning of the prose, because she pauses and puts stress in the wrong places. It’s like every sentence is disconnected from the context of the one before. There are jokes in this book— funny ones! But I had to listen two or three times and mentally “transcribe” the words back into text before I could make sense of them.

I’m going to go buy the Kindle edition. And I would suggest that, if you can’t access the written book, you should skip this one (or find another reader.) The book is worth the time, but Gavin’s narration is a waste of time.

Rich world

Such a deep rich world to get lost in. World building focused on the ‘new’ religious order and it’s gods and the old ways.
Loved the narrator.
The male lead was an interesting character to be sure and now that the story is over, I wish I knew him better.
The romance was tender but not sweeping or the main point if the story.
I will likely read the other books by the same authors, they aren’t continuations if this story so I’m definitely less hungry for them.
Read with audible escape package.

Magic and Kingship in the Land of the Five Gods

Ingrey Kin Wolfcliff is one of Bujold's wounded heroes. He begins in this story as a man who carries within himself the bound spirit of a great wolf. This makes him unholy but tolerated within the bounds of the religion of the Five Gods.

His earthly uses include being set to tasks that other men shun. Thus he was sent by the Royal Sealbearer to straighten out the mess that the young Prince had made of his death. It appears that the Prince had been engaging in forbidden sorcery. The situation though becomes more complicated when Lord Ingrey realizes that the young female prisoner he was to return to the capital for judicial disposition also bears an animal spirit as a result of the prince's malfeasance. Further when the complicated theology of the Five Gods and the tangled history of their land becomes involved the situation seems to spiral out of even Lord Ingrey's ability to control.

While the narrator at times seems a bit rushed and every so often it is not perfectly clear which character is making which comment, this is mostly very well done technically and a most enjoyable book.

Great intro to series, and a grand ride!

What I love about this book is the way it opens up this world. We get a primer on the mythos of the series' religion, which is woven through all of the books -- and we also learn a bit about how the government is run, laying a foundation for the stories to come.

The Hallowed Hunt begins with a gruesome murder and a funeral procession to bring the body of a murdered prince to the capital city. But just when we settle in thinking it's a murder mystery, albeit with an unlikely murderess, it turns into something else!

Finding out *who done it* gets dangerously complicated by betrayal, demon possession, wolf lords, horse lords, ghosts, and a *tame* ice bear on a rampage -- and ends with a haunted battlefield full of grandeur and pathos that's as close to Shakespearean as you can get in a fantasy novel.

Oh, and our hero and heroine are both God Touched, and in love, so there's that, too.

The romance is satisfying, and the ending is, too. I don't know why some people find it slow -- it's a mystery, and the good ones always have a slow burn, so naturally Bujold takes her time and allows her characters time to unravel the clues and find the culprit.

It's a grand ride, especially with wonderful secondary characters who bring sparkle to the proceedings, and the MCs grapple with their new, god-like abilities.

The reader, Marguerite Gavin does a great job, and in fact I think this is one of her best performances. Yes, she hesitates here and there, and loses her way in some sentences, but the instances were minor and didn't impact my enjoyment in the least.


HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, to everyone!

Not as good as I’d hoped.

The narration was fine, but to be honest the story was weird and difficult to follow at times. It might be a book better read than heard. The character’s behavior was also not what I would call typical, and without a lot of dreams bringing people together at just the right time the story would fall apart. Not as entertaining as other reviews led me to believe.