#tollee

Hunters Unlucky

Hunters Unlucky by Abigail Hilton, follows the story of Storm, a ferryshaft, as he navigates a post-war world of secrets and defies the expectations of his herd by surviving against odds again and again (and we love him for it).

The book was recommended by @ibenkrutt, who painted the beautiful covers, and I decided to give Hunters Unlucky a shot, going in blind.

I certainly don’t regret doing so! I think the book should be a must-read to any fan of xenofiction (stories from the point of view of animals or non-humanoid characters), but I believe any enjoyer of speculative biology and ethology, like me, would enjoy giving the book a chance too.

Hilton’s writing is very pleasing to read; the words flow easily and are chosen with care, depicting scenes and actions with welcome precision. The dialogues are quite exquisite (I’m envious!).

Plot points get foreshadowed, and every single scene builds upon the other in meaningful ways, making active reading a very rewarding experience. Truly, I couldn’t have chosen a better story to make my first live-blogging commentary on! You can check it (beware of spoilers) in the following blog @chainsawing-time-wha where each post is accompanied by fanart by me :)

Depiction of animal death below.

Extremely rough sketch of Tollee from hunters unlucky! Always thought she was described as looking particularly interesting and I decided early on she had large rounded ears in my mind (kind of like an African wild dog. I tried to give her a slim, more sighthound or deer shaped face.

My Little Ferryshaft

Drew a bunch of ferryshaft from Hunters Unlucky. Storm, Valla, Tollee, and Sauny. Said I was gonna do a full body of Tollee and did full bodies of a bunch of characters instead.

I actually didn’t forget about my drawing of Tollee from Hunters Unlucky but I did tragically have to redo the sketch bc I smeared oil pastels all over it and there was no fixing it after that so here’s version 2.0

A few Hunters Unlucky character sketches. These are some of the ferryshaft foal characters from book one. For the ferryshaft I’m trying to make them look a little like wolves and a little like deer? Canonically they’re omnivores, they have hooves, and they can howl.