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A review by hlizmarie
Seeker by Arwen Elys Dayton
2.0
The description of this book on Amazon's site sounded great. A girl called to become a Seeker, fighting "to protect the weak and the wronged". Taking her oath with her best friend and the boy she loves. Big letdown when it turns out to be nothing like what she expected. It seemed a bit scifi/fantasy and a bit medieval at the same time. Quin sounded like a kickass heroine. It should be right up my alley but, despite being fascinated with some aspects of the book, it generally disappointed.
There is some great stuff in this book. I liked the characters quite a bit and enjoyed hearing the story from many different perspectives. The emotional content was pretty good too. I understood the motivations of each of the narrators quite clearly even if I didn't always agree with their choices. Quin really was just as kickass as I'd hoped! The action scenes were exciting and the weaponry interesting. Unfortunately, the world-building here was really frustrating. It was clear Quin had been groomed and desperately wanted to become a Seeker. She finally takes her Oath only to find she's been lied to and they are glorified assassins rather than selfless dealers of justice. Yet at no point does the author go into what a Seeker should actually be doing. There is reference to other Seeker families, fights and murder between them, misdeeds of all kinds but never any explanation or example of what the purpose of the Seeker used to be in any concrete way. I still have no idea what the heck Quin thought she'd be doing as a Seeker. And even though I simply hate info dumps it was even more frustrating to have major explanations of concepts or character history dropped into the storyline long after the information would really have been helpful. The book is divided into three parts but the there's also a section called Interludes which include various important pieces of plot or character development that it seemed the author didn't know how to structure in otherwise. I found myself just shaking my head at the weirdness of it all.
This type of book is so frustrating for me as a reader since the concept and characters were so good in some parts and then so very bad in others. There was a complete lack of coherent world-building and the structure of the narrative was disjointed and choppy. I think I'd have to be in a real reading drought to pick up the next book in the series.
There is some great stuff in this book. I liked the characters quite a bit and enjoyed hearing the story from many different perspectives. The emotional content was pretty good too. I understood the motivations of each of the narrators quite clearly even if I didn't always agree with their choices. Quin really was just as kickass as I'd hoped! The action scenes were exciting and the weaponry interesting. Unfortunately, the world-building here was really frustrating. It was clear Quin had been groomed and desperately wanted to become a Seeker. She finally takes her Oath only to find she's been lied to and they are glorified assassins rather than selfless dealers of justice. Yet at no point does the author go into what a Seeker should actually be doing. There is reference to other Seeker families, fights and murder between them, misdeeds of all kinds but never any explanation or example of what the purpose of the Seeker used to be in any concrete way. I still have no idea what the heck Quin thought she'd be doing as a Seeker. And even though I simply hate info dumps it was even more frustrating to have major explanations of concepts or character history dropped into the storyline long after the information would really have been helpful. The book is divided into three parts but the there's also a section called Interludes which include various important pieces of plot or character development that it seemed the author didn't know how to structure in otherwise. I found myself just shaking my head at the weirdness of it all.
This type of book is so frustrating for me as a reader since the concept and characters were so good in some parts and then so very bad in others. There was a complete lack of coherent world-building and the structure of the narrative was disjointed and choppy. I think I'd have to be in a real reading drought to pick up the next book in the series.