This is a great story – period. No ifs and buts in my opinion. For me, the master storyteller is one who knows how to keep us turning the pages, and SA Hunter does this brilliantly. There was no place where I thought I’d just keep going because I’d started. I don’t have that kind of time available and specifically not for reading from a screen.

Unicorn Bait dragged me along with action, humour and ever more inventive plot turns. I immediately felt I was with Naomi rather than reading about her, and began to be terminally linked to the other characters the moment the mouse started to talk. The characters are revealed in their actions and in how Naomi interacts with them. This kept me squarely in Naomi’s frame of reference. With a strong protagonist, I don’t want to be having my own impressions of the other characters. I want hers. Then I feel her feelings, and it all hangs together.

There have been suggestions that Naomi’s background could have been introduced earlier. However, that would have put me in her own world and led me to believe the story was set there. I probably wouldn’t have stayed, but if I had, changing later to another one would then have left me feeling I’d been misled. Much better, in my opinion, if stories deliver on what they promise in their opening. As it was, I found myself in the same state of uncertainty and disorientation as Naomi was in, fighting my way to some sort of understanding, as she was. Looking at this objectively, some kinds of stories use Action-Think-Reaction, but this kind of fast-moving narrative is probably much better supported by Action-Reaction-Think.

One technique SA has perfected is letting us know something has been decided but leaving us not knowing what or how till later when it’s happening. This, along with jumping to the next scene cleanly without lots of preparation, is a large part of the reason why it’s nearly impossible to stop reading.

So for my money, SA’s handling of the narrative has a feeling of authority and confidence. I loved it. I have surfaced after three sessions of totally focused reading feeling as if I have been where Naomi has been and seen what she saw. I am bereaved at her loss. I ask for nothing more in a story.

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