Review: Seeker by Arwen Elys Dayton

Title: Seeker
Author: Arwen Elys Dayton
Series: Seeker, book #1
Publisher: Delacorte BFYR
Publication Date: February 10, 2015
Source: from publisher via Netgalley
Purchase: Amazon | Barnes & Noble

For readers of A Game of Thrones and The Hunger Games comes an epic new series.

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.

Gah, can we stop with the comparisons already? I really hate it when summaries include these because it really tends to muck up the way a reader goes into a story, as well as what they take away from it. To me, this book was like no other I've read. It's told in third person omniscient from four different perspectives, and it's incredibly fast-paced, which leaves some of the novel feeling as if it's lacking a coherent connection to previous events in the story. But, it all rights itself in the end and the story becomes quite cohesive, meaning everything comes around full circle and you're left with a mind-blowing, WTF conclusion. Or, at least, I was.

I've seen a lot of DNF and not-so-pleasant reviews of Seeker, and I can see where some readers would have trouble with this novel. Myself, I couldn't stop reading it. Every time I tried to put the book down, something else would happen and I'd have to see how that aspect would play out. The pacing is a bit disjointed, especially when the reader is taken from the present and then sent back to the past in an interlude that lasts several chapters and several perspectives. And then plunged head-first into the story a solid year-and-a-half later. It's intense, that's for sure. But it makes for one crazy story that kept me captivated to the very last page.

The characters make this story what it is; they're all so intriguing with all their questionable and underlying motives. Some of the characters I thought I would love in the beginning of the book became characters that I could barely tolerate in the end, while others who were barely a blip on the map at the start became favorites and I couldn't get enough of their stories. I loved the reversal of fortune that occurs within the pages of this book and how each character reacted to such a fate.

I expected a shifty turn in the romance, based on the summary of the novel, but I honestly had no idea what to expect. And I don't want to ruin it for anyone else. But it was pretty unexpected, considering the circumstances...though I was REALLY hoping the author would take the romance in a certain direction. And I'm pretty pleased with where it left off.

The setting became a character itself at the hands of the author. Or maybe I should say settings, since half of the story occurs in Scotland, while the other half takes place in Hong Kong. These locations were beautifully described, and although I've always had a soft spot for Scotland, with its castles and all of that green, green land, I actually preferred the story once it landed in Hong Kong. If I thought the first part of the book was intense, I was woefully unprepared for what was to transpire in the latter sections of the story.

I really don't know how to describe this novel except to call it intense over and over again. It's the kind of story that you have to be willing to give a chance, knowing that you're going to be confused for a majority of the book but that all will be revealed in the end. Personally, I can't wait to see what's next for these characters in Traveler!

GIF it to me straight:

About the author:

Arwen Elys Dayton is hard at work on the SEEKER series, a grand YA story for Random House.

Arwen began her career as a teenage staff writer at a foundation that produced Peabody Award-winning educational shows for PBS. Soon afterward, she began writing screenplays and novels, including Sovereign’s Hold and Resurrection, the #1 Amazon bestseller in Sci-Fi in both the US and the UK.

She spends months doing research for her stories. Her explorations have taken her around the world to places like the Great Pyramid (which she explored by flashlight when researching Resurrection), Hong Kong and its many islands, and lots of ruined castles in Scotland. She enjoys creating complete worlds inhabited by characters who charm, frustrate or inspire.

Arwen lives with her husband and their three children on the West Coast of the United States. She is represented by Jodi Reamer at Writers House.

Find Arwen:

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Labels: 2015 debut, arwen elys dayton, beautiful covers, fantasy, favorites, random house, reviews, seeker, time travel