Seeker by Arwen Elys Dayton (Website, Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads)Also by this author: Disruptor
Published by Random House Children's Books on February 10th 2015
Genres: Action & Adventure, Friendship, General, Science Fiction, Social Issues, Young Adult
Pages: 448
Format: eARC
“Fans of The Hunger Games and Divergent will love Seeker.”—TeenVogue.com The night Quin Kincaid takes her Oath, she will become what she has trained to be her entire life. She will become a Seeker. This is her legacy, and it is an honor. As a Seeker, Quin will fight beside her two closest companions, Shinobu and John, to protect the weak and the wronged. Together they will stand for light in a shadowy world. And she'll be with the boy she loves--who's also her best friend. But the night Quin takes her Oath, everything changes. Being a Seeker is not what she thought. Her family is not what she thought. Even the boy she loves is not who she thought. And now it's too late to walk away."Fans of Veronica Roth’s Divergent, Marie Lu’s Legend, and Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games series: your next obsession has arrived."-School Library Journal"In this powerful beginning to a complex family saga...Dayton excels at creating memorable characters."-Publishers Weekly“[A] genre-blending sci-fi, fantasy…[with] action-packed scenes.”—Booklist "Secrets, danger, and romance meet in this unforgettable epic fantasy." —Kami Garcia, #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of Beautiful Creatures & author of Unbreakable"A tightly-woven, action-packed story of survivial and adventure, Seeker is perfect for fans of Game of Thrones." —Tahereh Mafi, author of the New York Times bestselling Shatter Me seriesFrom the Hardcover edition.
Seeker by Arwen Elys Dayton is one of those books that I think people will either really love or really not love. I myself am middle of the road on this book which is why I have it rated a 3 star.
I love the idea behind this book. The main character is a girl who has grown up wanting to become a Seeker and follow in the footsteps of her family. The challenge I had was that the Seeker legacy was never really explained. They “alter the world for the better” but there was never any real explanation around what that meant. Instead, we are dropped right into the story of these characters wanting something that we don’t really have a meaning around.
Quin as a main character was interesting. There were times I liked her and times that she drove me crazy. She did not have an easy life but it was one she chose –I don’t know that she truly understood the full story and had it been me, I would have been asking questions along the way instead of relying only on stories shared by my father and uncle. Also – around this….we are never really told what the heck happens that turns Quin and Shinobu from their fathers and the life of a Seeker…I needed this to better understand what really was going on. Instead I was made to guess and infer things based on the feelings they had about it.
I also wish she would have talked to John and pushed him to answer her questions about his background regardless of how he felt about it. She knew he was hiding something and it upset him but she let him push her back when she asked and in the end, it hurt them both.
The two boys were interesting. John and Shinobu are both very close to Quin and there is a bit of a love triangle here. In the beginning it doesn’t really play into the story but once things get moving, it definitely does.
John has a good story and the only thing I can say here without ruining the story for anyone is that he has reason to believe he has a right to the things he fights for. If he had been up front with Quin they probably would have avoided what ends up happening and things might have ended up differently for everyone.
Shinobu was curious. Yes, he has feelings for Quin but instead of acting on them, he decides that he is going to walk away…to a life of drugs and who knows what else. It is only by chance that he ends up back in Quin’s world but when he does, he jumps back in to help her out. As they become friends again, Quin realizes there is more to Shinobu than she originally thought and of course, this changes their relationship.
The creation of the worlds was something I found intriguing. During one section the characters are in Scotland and another section takes them to a futuristic Hong Kong. Somehow it all seemed to flow together but I do wish we had gotten more about how things fit together and some descriptions to link them.
I’m not really sure what else to write on this as I don’t want to give anything away but on top of that, I don’t know that I could truly provide a clear synopsis of what the book is truly about even though I have read it. I don’t mean this to be taken in a bad way…I just didn’t think that as a reader, I closed this book truly knowing what the life of a Seeker is and how Quin is different. The issues seemed to arise from her father more than the actual role of a Seeker but we didn’t get any background on how/where things turned and went wrong.
This one just didn’t grab me like I thought it would and it could just be a case of “it’s not you, it’s me” so please keep that in mind. I will most likely keep book two on my radar to see what happens next in this series…perhaps I will get some of the information there that I didn’t get in book one.
Thank you to Netgalley and Random House for the review copy!
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