Seeker

SEEKER wasn't quite what I was expecting but I enjoyed it anyway. This story is told from the viewpoint's of four young people. Quin, John, Shinobu, and Maud.Quin, Shinobu, and John are being trained by Quin's father and Shinobu's father to be Seekers. They are taught that they will be righting wrongs and ending injustice once they have finished their brutal training and taken their oaths. John is an outsider because he is from another Seeker family and because he didn't begin his training until he was twelve. Quin and John are falling in love despite parental disapproval. Shinobu has loved Quin since they were young but Quin sees him as a cousin and not a love interest.Maud is the real outsider. She is known as the Young Dread. Dread's are observers who are supposed to keep the Seekers on the right path. While she admires the Old Dread who picked her to train, she hates the Middle Dread because she sees that he is corrupt. He also abuses her. Maud looks to be about fifteen but was born in the 1400s. Periods of time in the There have stretched her life.Things take a turn for the unexpected when Quin and Shinobu go on their first mission and find that they are just killers who kill for gain. Their noble calling isn't real. This traumatizes both of them but they are too used to obeying Quin's father to leave. John had been sent home after failing to be made a Seeker. But John has revenge on his mind.This story travels from Scotland to Hong Kong to London as the kids try to come to terms with their lives. They all use different ways. Shinobu turns to drugs and Quin has her past buried when she almost dies. She is learning to be a healer as her way of making up for being a killer. John is determined to regain the athame that was stolen from his family and determined to learn to use it. He will do any evil thing to regain control of it. It is the athames that allow the Seekers to enter the There and to travel to different places. Each family has one. The Dreads also have their own athame.This was a fascinating story. I especially liked the way each of them dealt with the consequences of their actions.

This review originally appeared at: https://adkwriter15.wordpress.com/2016/01/07/thesis-thursdays-review-seeker-by-arwen-elys-dayton/When I added this book for my thesis, I had to write that first chapter within the week. My adviser thought I was crazy. I was, but I just had a FEELING that I needed this book in my thesis. Mostly because it was published in 2015. Well, it was perfect for my thesis alright. In all the right wrong ways.This is going to be a spoilery review because I have a lot of things to say.Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat. This is not Quin’s story. Quin is the pretend main character of this novel. (It’s also told in rotating POV from her, Shinobu and John.) Maybe this will change in later books, but that is certainly the case here. She is de facto main character because everything revolves around her, but after the first section she literally does nothing. More on that later.Anyways, the book opens up with John, Quin, and Shinobu training to be Seekers, this high and mighty fighting force that they are apparently the last apprentices of. John and Quin are together, and Shinobu is jealous of John. Love triangle time, surprise! After the opening training scene, Quin’s father, Briac–their leader–tells Shinobu and Quin that they are ready to take the oath. While they run off to get ready, Briac kicks out John.Quin has no idea this is happening, though, so she and Shinobu go through with their initiation. The book doesn’t reveal what exactly happens during their initiation night until much later, but the big reveal here is that the Seekers aren’t high and mighty anymore. They’re assassins for hire. Briac just forced his kid to kill children. What a guy. Quin wants to leave, but she doesn’t. She feels like she can’t. So she goes on killing people on her dad’s orders.Back to John. It turns out that Briac killed John’s mom, and John’s been out for revenge the whole time. So after he gets kicked out, he goes back to the Seeker headquarters and burns the place to the ground, trying to get to Briac and some special Seeker weaponry. In the process, he kills Shinobu’s dad and kidnaps Quin’s mom. Quin and Shinobu are having none of that, so they save Quin’s mom and run away together–and Quin and John are over. At least to Quin anyways.Now, honestly, if the story had gone somewhere different from here, maybe I could have liked it more. Quin’s struggle with what she’d done for her father could have been really good. Shinobu and Quin’s mission to avenge their parents and stop John could have been really good. But, instead, we get the whole middle of this book.The middle in which Quin goes into self-inflicted amnesia where she can’t handle what she’s done and Shinobu turns to drugs and they’re all separated and not doing anything.Yep, that’s right. Instead of dealing, Quin forgets everything. Which means that when the action finally kicks back up again, she ends up sort of helping John because the only thing she remembers is that she vaguely loved him once and then ends up falling for Shinobu because he keeps showing up to save her. You know, since she can’t save herself because she’s forced herself to forget every bit of training she’s ever had. She starts remembering towards the end, but not enough to totally take herself out of damsel in distress territory.By the end of the book she declares that she loves Shinobu and that John has to be stopped, so she’s going to be the Seeker she always wanted to be and stop him. Maybe, just maybe, she has a more active role in the next two books, but I certainly won’t be reading them.It’s frustrating too, because I wanted to like this book. It started off fairly promising, if you could get past the love triangle and the fairly generic characters. I liked the lore of the Seekers a lot. I would have read on just for that. However, if I hadn’t been reading this for my thesis, I would have jumped ship to DNF land once Quin lost her memory. I cannot stand that trope, and here it was just used to further the love triangle.Like I’ve said, my thesis is about tropism in YA fantasy literature featuring female assassins so … Quin fit to the T when I was describing a bunch of things wrong with the genre. So that’s why this book was perfect for all the wrong reasons. If you’re doing a similar project, I present a perfect exhibit. If you’re looking to read this book but can’t stand tropes? Not so much.

I loved Arwen Dayton's book, Resurrection! I've been very excited to read this new book for some months. I first saw the cover of Seeker and had the impression it would be a high fantasy sort of story. Even the name "Seeker" gave me that idea. Something similar to Graceling or a young adult Game of Thrones. That is not what Seeker is. At least not in my opinion. That doesn't mean it's bad. It's actually quite good, but it's far more modern and almost Sci-Fi than I think most readers were expecting. I saw some poor reviews for Seeker and even some people stating they had quit mid-story. I think this factor has something to do with it. It wasn't what they had expected they would be reading. That for me was all the more reason to follow through and see what this author had in store for us…Frankly, I don't know what genre this book falls under. Its actually almost in a genre of the author's own making. I can't think of anything it's similar to. The story line is very unique. There is absolutely nothing I've read recently that is like it. I like that because a lot of books out there today are rather formulaic. Seeker is not.It is fast paced and full of action. You won't be bored at all. It will at times pull on your heart strings. Quinn is in the unfortunate position of having to figure out who her real friends are despite family ties. She has to make several tough choices. My favorite character is Maud. I'm proud of the decisions she made at the end. There are many twists and turns and I'm definitely on board to read book 2 because I do absolutely want to know what happens.I do recommend you read Seeker. Read it with a willingness to experience something different, something outside the box! Enjoy!

actually enjoyed it although I am not a science fiction fan