Although a number of characters are introduced in The Huntsman, Finn Ferral and his mutant companion Baer are the most fully developed. Joshua Ferral is portrayed as an admirable man but more through Finn's remembrances of the qualities he instilled in his adopted son than through his own actions in the story.

Other characterizations are achieved through general collective description.

For example, most of the humans are fearful and cowering, feeling that their only defenses against the Slavers are concealment and obscurity. Those who have been captured entertain no hope of freedom and for the most part are resigned to total submissiveness until they die.

The Slavers are hideous humanoids who wish to attain complete control of the planet, and they are in the process of genetic experiments through which they hope to produce organisms of human appearance, but possessing animal strength and weakened...