Samhain Publishing, $2.50, ISBN 1-59998-859-3
Fantasy Romance, 2008
Hunting the Huntress is a ménage à trois short story involving shape-shifting horndogs (one woman, two men). In other words, it’s one of those stories, but fortunately, this one is actually pretty good.
This time around, we’re dealing with shapeshifting cougars in a Jean M Auel-type fantasy setting where these folks live in tribes in the Great Plains. Nilana, our heroine, is the only female hunter in her tribe and she’s happy with the freedom to run along, kill hapless animals, and doing as she pleases. Until now, that is, when she’s being chased by two randy fellows intent of making her their life mates under the full moon. The fellows are Tate, the warrior chief of the Meskwaku tribe, and his shaman Cheveyo. Nilana thinks she’s too Miss Independent for such mate nonsense, but we all know she’ll change her tune when they catch her and drag her back to the cave for some red hot furry-lovin’.
What I like about this threesome arrangement is that Ms Case doesn’t make the two guys play the rear end game just for the sake of pandering to the ménage à trois formula. Tate – don’t ask me why his name is Tate – and Cheveyo have a relationship that is more like master and apprentice, with Cheveyo being the Yoda to Tate’s Obi-Wan. Although, fortunately, Cheveyo here is hunky and hot instead of green and stumpy because I don’t think I can sit down and read about a green stumpy English-mangling troll thing giving it to a babe without laughing out loud.
In this story, the use of tradition and custom to explain the ménage à trois makes sense. Tate and Cheveyo are too much like sensitive new age guys here for my liking but they nonetheless get primal and savage where it comes to the naughty stuff, which is of course always good where I am concerned. The love scenes are very nicely done indeed. Of course, with this being a short story, I can’t expect too much when it comes to characterization. For a short story, Hunting the Huntress delivers a pretty good sexual fantasy with a ménage à trois that makes sense and works very well in the context of the story.
