Hunter

About the Hunter series

A century after an interdimensional catastrophe called the Diseray tore holes between Earth and other worlds, monsters now cross freely into human cities, and society survives behind heavily defended Cities protected by young, magically Gifted fighters called Hunters. Joyeaux "Joy" Charmand grew up in an isolated mountain community training to fight monsters directly; when she's recruited to the walled city of Apex, she finds a celebrity culture built around telegenic Hunters competing for fame and sponsorship, and a bureaucracy more interested in managing its heroes' image than in the monsters actually breaching the walls. Hunter establishes Joy's adjustment to Apex and its politics; Elite and Apex escalate both the monster threat and the human corruption underneath the city's carefully managed heroics, forcing Joy to confront threats from both directions at once.

The trilogy pairs a straightforward monster-hunting premise with a sharper satirical edge aimed at celebrity culture and reality-television spectacle, filtered through a teenage protagonist raised outside that system and uneasy about being absorbed into it.

How to read this series

Publication order is the only order — Joy's story runs continuously across all three books. Read Hunter (2015), Elite (2016), and Apex (2017) in that sequence. No familiarity with Lackey's other series is required; this is a self-contained modern-day setting distinct from Valdemar or her other continuities.