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The Hunted of 2060 by Ami Blackwelder.
Createspace Publishing. www.amiblackwelder.blogspot.com
There’s a beast in all of us!
SWEET young love and hey nonny-nonny ─ it’s the Shakespeare touch, but . . . Like the bard of old, author Blackwelder ambushes romance with dark pit-traps. She’s good at this and easy to read, because her fantasy hangs close to our real world.
In The Hunted of 2060, as in her other books, she makes weird events totally credible. I’d say she can claim as her own a new genre, Reality Fantasy. Or you can read this as an allegory, set in Alaska, on our changing world. Mostly, however, it is a rattling good story about a lovable girl called April who is not quite human.
She doesn’t know it to begin with, and her guy is normal. This is a good original take on forbidden love. It’s Planet Earth in 2060 complete with hover trains, skycars, robot waiters and hologram books. We have defeated an Alien invasion, yet traces remain of a strange species whose DNA can blend to the form of any earthly creature.
The Hunted of the title are hybrid aliens, resulting from mixed mating with humans. There is a hit squad seeking them out and exterminating them. To her horror, April discovers she is one of these halfcastes, with peculiar relatives. I won’t spoil the story by divulging more, but think polarbear, deer, bird, wolf. Such a family menagerie may seem a bit daft, but Ami Blackwelder’s controlled skill carries this plot convincingly.
Could be movie material too. ─ Cathy Macleod, April 2010.
