Seeker (Book 1) by Arwen Elys Dayton

Page count 480

Genre: Fantasy, YA

“Being a Seeker is not what she thought. Her family is not what she thought. Even the boy she loves is not what she thought.” – Author Summary

Quin Kincaid has trained her entire life to be a Seeker. To take her oath is an honor, it’s her legacy. As a Seeker she will fight by her two closest friends, Shinobu and John, to protect the people who are in need of it. By each other’s sides, they will fight through the shadowy world, and she will be with the boy she loves, who is also her best friend. The night Quin takes her Oath, everything changes. Being a Seeker is not what she told it would be, but now it’s too late for her to walk away.

Weird summary, I know. But I had high hopes for this book, I thought that the summary sounded nice and that it would be a pretty intense book… but I was wrong. I had a lot of trouble trying to finish this book and it therefore took me awhile to read it. The plot of the book is awesome, but the way it plays out doesn’t make sense to me, even though I have now read all three books.

I’m gonna start with the plot and setting. The characters in the book are training to be seekers, which I took as secret knights that secretly help the world, and as far as I know I’m correct with that. I enjoyed the training parts of the book, they were well-thought out and portrayed nicely. The plot of the book was really cool, I enjoyed the basic plot. But one of my biggest problems with the book was that I didn’t entirely understand the setting. The book starts and they are on an estate that has cabins, workshops, and other types of buildings. The characters talk about riding horses, so I assume that the setting is in an older time and not really modern. But then the characters start talking about their special weapons, whipswords, that can go from a liquid to solid form depending on what the owner wants, and they talk about train stations, and flying building that remind me of blimps, so I’m very confused as to what the setting of the story is. Also, the entire first half of the book is set in one place, the estate, until later on when they move to Hong Kong, so that was pretty hard for me to get into.

Now, the characters. I enjoyed most of the characters in the book. I loved the main character, Quin, I enjoyed  the main character’s boyfriend, John, I was okay with Quin’s mom and Uncle, Fiona and Alistair, but I really didn’t like the characters of Quin’s dad and her half-third cousin (Book’s words) Shinobu. Quin’s dad is, SPOILER, the villain of the first half of the book, for the most part, and it made me feel almost sad that the reason I didn’t like him didn’t really have anything to do with that. Her dad is described as a cruel character that enjoys power more than anything, but throughout the book, the worst things I saw him do were train people, point out their flaws, and show the trainees a person that has been severely tortured ( I know that’s bad but the book didn’t make it seem so terrible.) I personally feel like the character wasn’t written as cruel and terrible as he could have been. The other character I didn’t really like is Shinobu. He is Quin’s half-third cousin… doesn’t that mean that they are related? At least related enough to make it weird that he is in love with her? I guess not, in the book, most of Shinobu’s motivation was all about Quin and how much he wanted to be with her. In the second half of the book he wasn’t like that as much but his character wasn’t really that interesting, he was kind of dull even though he did some pretty intense things. The final characters that I really enjoyed were the Dreads, people who are supposed to watch over the Seekers and solidify their Oaths. The Young Dread, Maud, is the character that you get to meet the most out of the three of them, and I truly love her character and where she goes throughout the story. I enjoyed the Old Dread even though he wasn’t in the story much, and I really enjoyed the Middle Dread who, SPOILER, was the villain throughout the second half of the book. His cruelty was really shown throughout meeting him and it really made me hate him, in a good way.

Pros:

Characters

General plot

The Dreads

Cons:

Setting

Shinobu and Quin’s dad

First part of the book is slow

Confusing plot points
Even though this book was hard for me to read, I did enjoy the rest of the books, so I really hope you give this book a try. Enjoy your reading!