The Hunting Universe

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Fanfiction
Title: The Hunting Universe
Author(s): Jane of Australia
Date(s):
Length: series of stories and novels
Genre: slash AUs
Fandom: The Professionals
External Links:

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The Hunting Universe is a series of Professionals alternate universe fantasy Raven/Bodie slash novels and stories by Jane of Australia. It comprises 20 stories in various zines. Some of the circuit stories do not have the same title when found in print. Those stories that were formally published have braided ribbon bindings and black and white art. Book one was published in 1986 and the last book was published in 1992.

It appears that in roughly 2001, all of the stories were available bound together. See below.

the series was so popular that one fan commissioned Suzan Lovett to create artwork depicting the first chapter of The Hunting where Raven and Bodie meet.

All in all, the order, sites and titles of this series is very difficult to figure out and provides a number of information conflicts.

More About Binding Than You Probably Ever Wanted to Know

Jane, in her expansive and exhausting style, described some binding challenges of these zines in What do the books actually look like? and Binding on special issues is yours to choose!.

A 2001 (?) Flyer

The massive, six-part epic where it all began, under one cover...

Here is the place it all began ... a summer's night in a place called Garth's Forest, on the human side of the Black Hills. A terrible battle has been fought between mortal enemies, and the humans won. Garth, the region's most powerful chieftain, has taken a prisoner — a warprize — who is literally worth his weight in gold...

The warrior, Bodie, arrives home to the stockaded town late one night, to find the warprize being exhibited in Garth's feasting hall. And to Bodie's complete astonishment, he recognises the young elf, though Bodie never knew his name.

Garth knows exactly who he has captured. The warprize is Raven, son of Wulff, the young chieftain of the most powerful clan of the elven Kith tribe. Garth sees the young man as a prize, invaluable in the endless war between the two peoples; Bodie, however, recognises Raven as the man who literally saved the life of an enemy in battle. The life saved waw Bodie's own.

So, how could Bodie stand aside and see the beautiful elven youth abused by Garth and his noblemen? He can't, and one night he steals Raven away, and they make their run for freedom, across the hills.

For Bodie this is a one-way trip. He knows he will be hunted till the day he dies for what he has done. For Raven, it is the gift of life, when he had fully expected to die.

The journey is ardous, because at this time Raven is blind. It's a voice, a gentleness and kindness, he falls in love with ... and imagine his joy, to regain his sight at home in Morhod, west of the hills, and discover that his new mate is also a great beauty in his own right.

The first volume of THE HUNTING says Welcome to Morhod ... the story is vast, and impossible to synopsize here; but this is where you'll first meet Raven's human mother, Feyleen ... Bodie's first love, Kevin ... Kevin's 'boy,' Raphael ... the doomed Kith shaman, Falcon ... the great Kith shaman of eons gone by, Amber, who is the "Merlin" of this story ... and many more of the characters who drive the story through more than two million words of narrative.

So begins an epic saga that will span decades of time, and around 2,700 pages of fiction in eight volumnes, and over sixty illustrations.

You can taste a small selection of the illustrations right here on the site (we're hoping to find or make the space to upload more soon), and you can even, at your leisure, sample great swathes of the text on-line! In cooperation with The Circuit Archive, we've built an interface that allows Nut Hatch readers to "pull" the text of the first five segments (about the first 200pp) of THE HUNTING into this very screen.

The first ten segments of the saga were 'circlated' [sic] more than a decade ago, in the days when 'the circuit' meant piles of photocopies going through the mail. Those parts are still 'free for all,' and you're more than welcome to collect them as and where you can. The ten segments together comprise Books One and Two, entitled THE HUNTING and THE KINGDOM OF SUMMER respectively.

However, the remainder of THE HUNTING was published zine-fashion by Nut Hatch, and we still 'print to order,' making up individual books or whole bound-in-volume sets, while we work to prepare this website to celebrate THE HUNTING's fifteenth birthday! (Or should that be 'feast day,' all things considered?!)

Most people who find themselves ordering six out of eight volumes elect to order THE HUNTING and THE KINDGOM OF SUMMER along with all the others, so as to have the whole thing on the shelf, complete and bound-in-voume. Don't let us twist your arm here! But ... remember that the Aussie dollar is only worth about .63 against the US dollar ... it's not actually as expensive as you may expect, to indulge yourself in this pleasure.

Welcome to Morhod. [1]

Reactions/Reviews

Unknown Date

Is a long sweeping epic that involves elves! It's worth a read just to get a feel for how she writes, particularly if you are considering purchasing the Flesh and Steel Trilogy. I quite enjoyed it, but don't think I'd want to read beyond Book One. [2]

1993

I think the very first chapter of the Hunting was the same for me; the totally subjugated Doyle, even blinded, for god sake, willing to be fucked by Bodie just cuz he's marginally less brutish than his other captors; but I loved it. [3]

So many of her [stories] could be good if she stopped sooner, or edited a bit.... I managed the HUNTING until I realized she thought castration involved removing the penis as well as the balls, in which case, removal under the very primitive conditions of his abuser would have been deadly. [4]

I like "The Hunting". It's a "kinder, gentler" a/u that I don't really mind on occasion (a perpetual dose is another story). [5]

Being into Sci-Fi and Fantasy in the mundane world, I find I just LOVE this universe -- apologies to those what don't. [6]

Re: The Hunting. Yes, well, but... It's so BLOODY BORING! It goes on and on and on and on and on and on--and we still haven't got anywhere. And repetitious!

My god, if we had a dime for every time a single phrase is reused, unchanged, we'd all be rich (example: in Death's Head or the second professionally published novel, whichever, the air is described as 'soup". That's it. Just soupy, again and again. I got to the point I'd have been delighted if she'd even said the air was like minestrone.

And as for hair being a curtain across men's (oh, sorry, youths' and boys') shoulders... I'll forgive a lot, but I forgive less in an experienced writer who has enough word-count to have done things in depth and enough experience to know more than one adjective per inanimate object. But then, I don't like Jane's work: too long for my taste, and too, too...well, nice, and predictable. I'd much rather read Courtney Grey or Thomas. Or (and yes, this is a *very* unsubtle hint) a good humour piece like Underneath the Arches. [7]

Hey, I LOVE Ray-as-a-Morhod-elf! But then, I'm really warped...

The thing I like about the Nut Hatch PROS stuff is that her style and skill have improved so drastically in the last ten years or so. I mean, I freely admit that the first two books of The Hunting suffered from a lethal case of passive-itis. The more recent releases show a lot more care and attention to style and active voice than the first books. It's like watching a writer grow up. She makes me believe I can do it with my own original science fiction and fantasy writing.

Gee, I would have said the opposite. I think Jane's writing style has gotten ponderous and self-indulgent, if anything, these days. I find it extremely difficult getting through her longer stories because she gets so repetitive.
In that respect, I agree. By writing style, I meant use of active over passive voice. It almost hurts to read the first installments of The Hunting, because she used so much passive language. The overuse of "was," "has been," "-ly," and "-ing" words, and lackluster description. Her more recent works, though she's a bit repetitive, are better in that respect. And you also must remember, Jane herself has only written about half of what's been printed about The Hunting. I was talking to Betty Ann Brown (Nut Hatch's US rep) just last week, and she told me this. Some of the repetition is most certainly the ghost writers [8] picking up on words and turns of phrase that appeared in other works. They have deliberately used these words in order to disguise the fact that they're writing in someone else's universe. This is similar to the way almost all writers in the Professionals realm describe Doyle's eyes in feline terms (cat-green, et al.) or as emeralds, when in fact his eyes, though a shade of green, are neither slitted like cats nor as brilliant green as emeralds. It's just an accepted universal trait that few slash writers want to argue against. I think the overuse of certain descriptive terms in The Hunting falls under this same heading.
I didn't realize that writing badly could be considered a courtesy.... disguising one's own talents in order to continue a fanfic tradition as it began, how magnanimous. I guess Jane must be really pleased and gratified at the impact she's had.[9]

1998

Small pets have been injured when The Hunting fell on them. There are Hunting mountains in closets of Pros fans across the land. Each to his own taste; I can't bear The Hunting, but everyone should try at least the first chapter. [10]

2003

Jane of Australia isn't one of my favorite Pros authors, but she's got a definite following. She leans toward Alternate Universe (AU) stories, fantasy universes, and "happily ever after." My recommendation of The Hunting actually does double-duty; it's a good example of Jane's style, as well as being representative of the kind of Alternate Universe stories that are common within Pros fandom. [11]

I love The Hunting--all of it, not just what you can get online. She did a wonderful job creating a wonderful universe. [12]

The Hunting Companion's Order and Information

  • from 1989, printed in The Hunting Universe #2

The Hatstand's Order and Information

Some of this information is from The Hatstand.

The dates can be perplexing. This may be due to a difference between publication dates, dates the stories took place, and their multiple publication arenas.

References

  1. ^ flyer
  2. ^ alicambs Professional Recs, Archived version updated April 15, 2012.
  3. ^ Sandy Herrold discussing the story on the Virgule-L mailing list in 1993, quoted with permission.
  4. ^ Ruth Kurz, quoted with permission from Virgule-L (June 16, 1993)
  5. ^ quoted anonymously from Virgule-L (June 16, 1993)
  6. ^ quoted anonymously from Virgule-L (September 9, 1993)
  7. ^ quoted anonymously with permission from Virgule-L (October 12, 1993)
  8. ^ Are these "ghost writers" Jane's other pseuds?
  9. ^ quoted anonymously from Virgule-L (September-October, 1993)
  10. ^ fan discussing the series on the CI5 List in 1998, quoted anonymously with permission.
  11. ^ recced at Crack Van, December 2003
  12. ^ recced at Crack Van, December 2003
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