With Huntress, L.J. Smith begins to bring her series closer to it's end game. Jez Redfern is the leader of a vampire gang, hell-bent on ridding the world of human 'vermin', however, when she learns she's half-human herself, she quickly (almost too quickly, in my opinion) switches teams and joins Circle Daybreak. Her task is to find and rescue the "Wild Power" nearby and protect that person from her uncle and his faction's desire to cause an apocalypse that will allow vampires to once again rule the world.
This book moved the plot along quickly with less time for the character development that most of the books in the beginning of the series have focused on. Jez's own revelations take back seat to the rapidly developing plot, but the novel was still engaging and suspenseful.

The seventh book in L.J. Smith's Night World series, in which a hidden society of vampires, witches and shape-shifters exists alongside the human one, Huntress is the story of Jez Redfern, who goes from being the leader of a dangerous vampire-gang, to a vampire-slayer fiercely bent on protecting humanity. When Jez learns that she is half human, that her mother was one of "them" - a vermin - she is forced to rethink everything she believes, about herself, and about the Night World. Now a member of Circle Daybreak, a renegade Night World organization dedicated to building bonds of trust and respect between the species, Jez finds herself dispatched on a deadly mission with far-reaching consequences.

As the millenium draws near, so too does the apocalypse, and Circle Daybreak and the Night World Council race to find the Wild Powers - four beings whose astonishing abilities can either turn back the darkness, or bring it down upon the world. Can Jez locate the Wild Power believed to be in the San Francisco area? Or will her old gang, led by the handsome and scheming Morgead Blackthorn - Jez's erstwhile second-in-command, sometime friend, and eternal soulmate - kill her first...?

Smith's series takes a new direction in Huntress, adding a high-fantasy element that transforms it from a collection of stories about supernatural teenage love, to an ongoing epic narrative about battling evil and saving the world. Jez is an engaging heroine - strong and determined - and like all of Smith's female leads, infinitely preferable to the more recent Bella Swan, of Twilight fame.

Romantic love definitely takes a back seat in this installment, although it is still quite important. Smith, who has a knack for putting her finger right on the contradictory emotions of adolescence, records Jez's thoughts regarding Morgead: "He's impossible and dangerous and hotheaded and stubborn... he's crazy... he's angry and hostile... he's frustrating and infuriating and he loves to make me miserable..." Sounds like true love, no...? ( )