Winter's Heart by Michael Kanuckel

Winter's Heart is set in a post-apocalyptic distant future. Great cities no longer loom on the horizon. Machinery that a technologically reliant society lie, for the most part, quietly rusting away. Humans now lived within smaller walled communities patrolled by guards. More importantly, humankind has learned they share the world with other races. Struggling to support his wife and children, Steven Boughmount and childhood friend Glen Tillson are Hunters, members of a Guild that patrols the land outside the walls of town. Their job is to protect the town from races whose goal is to destroy the humans.

A particularly difficult fight leaves them with a bounty larger than either could have imagined, and spells the beginning of their troubles with the guildmaster. Glen's suggestion to withhold the truth of the value of the bounty is met with resistance from Steven. No one has successfully managed to do so, and those caught cheating the guild are severely punished. Glen eventually convinces his friend to go along with his plan with the expected results.

Guildmaster Ashley confronts Steven with assurances that he knows Steven was only going along with Glen. Veiled threats of harm to his family accompany an offer of forgiveness if Steven and his friend will go into Hekton, a dangerous area from which no known Hunter has gone into and returned. Their only choices are to go or stay. Staying means to be kicked out of the guild, and at best, run out of town, at worst, killed. Not much is known about Hekton except its fabled riches and being over run with the trolls that are reputed to live in the abandoned tree top city.

The author has an easy way with prose that makes this story a comfortable read. Kanuckel's character development is superb with a depth seldom seen in a first novel. He makes it very easy to understand what motivates his characters; you can almost predict how they will react to a given situation. This one is a family man; that is the most important thing to him. The other one is a charmer, a player. That one is a bully, angry, greedy, power-hungry. At its heart, this is a story of one man and his family as they struggle to survive and offer their children a better future than they had growing up.

While the errors were few, that there were some missed in editing is why I can only give this book three stars. I was gifted a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book is available from Amazon.