Quin has spent her whole life training to becoming a Seeker, growing up on a remote estate in Scotland that hasn’t changed for hundreds of years. She is ready to protect the week, and join her line of ancestors in righting the wrongs of the world. But when Quin takes her vows, she learns that the reality of being a Seeker is not the noble path she believed it to be.
Seeker follows four protagonists, including Quin, through the treacherous waters of right and wrong, as they each hunt down the MacGuffin of the series, the athame (a dagger used by Seekers to travel around the world) to achieve what they think is best for the world.
Dayton has created complex characters, each one easy to sympathise with even as they work against one another to achieve their aims. Each character has good intentions, but as they say, the path to Hell is paved with good intentions, and Dayton enjoys playing around with moral ambiguity, so that you are never sure which character you should want to come out on top at the end of the book.
While I enjoyed the characters, the plot was ambiguous too, never really revealing enough to keep me engaged in the action. Not knowing the protagonist’s end game, as well as the antagonists in the book meant that as a reader I never really knew what the book was leading up to. And then it ends with a sequel necessary, and the aims of the protagonists are still not clear.
The novel is action packed however, and for those that enjoy just being taken along for the ride, Seeker is exciting at every turn, with unusual weapons, teleportation, and a mild steampunk feel. Seeker is an unusual blend of action, fantasy, science-fiction, and romance.
REVIWER: JJ McConnachie
TITLE: Seeker
AUTHOR(S): Arwen Elys Dayton
PUBLISHER: Penguin Random House
RRP: $21.99