The Hunt by Andrew Fukuda
My rating: 3/5 cats
so this book is kind of fun, but full of problematic holes and “huh’s?”
vampires.
vampires rule the day here. nearly everyone has become a vampire, and the humans who remain must camouflage their human characteristics to be able to survive and blend in. all the concessions are made to vampire-life: school is held at night, lighting is kept low, and meat is served very very rare. and remaining “hepers” or “humans” are periodically released into an arena for vampires to hunt and eat, in a morale-boosting extravaganza.
for a high school boy whose parents have both died/been turned, life can be complicated. all human impulses must be suppressed, otherwise, the vampires will know he is huuuuman, and will be unable to control themselves…he cannot sneeze, he cannot widen his eyes in surprise, he cannot sweat, he must shave his body every day and never ever smell like a human boy. no coughing, no getting sick, no pimples, no papercuts…i mean, it boggles the mind. this would never be possible, even in a well-constructed fantasy. and this one is not well-constructed. authors, again, build your worlds!! i do not understand these vampires.
so they don’t breed? but they age, they eat meat…do they excrete? they have bathrooms in the school, right? i thought i remembered a scene taking place in a school bathroom or locker room…(and i wish i wasn’t writing this in the middle of the anaheim convention center and i had the book with me) what makes them different? how did they take over the country—and what will they do when there are no more humans??
i suppose instead of world-building, we are given little social quirks. vampires do not laugh—instead they scratch their forearms. instead of making out, they perform some sort of elbow-into-armpit configuration. and seriously, unless we are talking about this:
do not even expect me to be interested in elbow sex.
who is maintaining the electricity here, and why?? why do vampires drool uncontrollably when they see a picture of a heper, but when there is one in their midst, they do not even realize it?? why can’t they go underwater? so many weird vampirisms here, so underexplained.
and for humans—why would you stay?? why wouldn’t you just move to the wilderness away from the freaking vampires? why continue to go to school for goodness’ sake? what could you possibly be learning in vampire high-school, and what career path could this high school possibly be preparing anyone for? or alternatively—why not just become a vampire? i mean, you continue to live in these communities where a hangnail could redefine you as dinner; once you start suppressing that many human impulses, you are already distancing yourself from “human” so why not just give in at that point? path of least resistance. you can’t go through your whole life without ever sneezing—without ever getting a fever. and how the hell do girl hepers deal with menstruation? answer my questions, book!
if i felt that this was some kind of cleverly-done extended metaphor in the “it gets better” tradition, exhibiting just how hard it is to suppress natural feelings and behaviors and how quick to bully people are when they are confronted with something they do not understand, that would be one thing. but this is another thing. this is just another attempt to blend the trends: vampire meets dystopia, hunger games style…
shit—my laptop is almost out of battery…TO BE CONTINUED MOMENTARILY
okay. so anyway, our hero gets chosen as one of the vampires to hunt the hepers in the next frenzy. naturally. because he is so good at passing.
and there are a few hepers living in a dome, and they are the next victims of this hunt. but they don’t know it. all they know is they live in a dome that retracts in the daylight and they an go out and hunt and do whatever things they need to do. they can read, they are articulate, they know how to use weapons. and so why do they stay in the dome? do they think they are pets? i know they say they cannot get far enough away from the dome in the daylight hours to escape, but that sounds a little suspect to me. also suspect is our boy’s reaction to them. he is surprised that they are as socially advanced as they are, but he shows them no loyalty; he still sees them as “other.” so who is he, really? not vampire, not heper—he is just…nothing.
and considering it took him five times of mentioning the lake and how thirsty he was “but noooo the vampires cannot see me driiiink” before he combined those two thoughts and realized “oh, i can drink the WATER from the LAKE!! maybe he would be better off becoming a vampire. dummy.
i don’ know—that whole “hepers in a dome” thing was weird, to me. like it was some kind of museum of natural history exhibit. they knew who their captors were, they knew they were in danger—they knew the dome could be retracted at any time and they could be eaten, but they get a note from their enemies and they just go traipsing off into the wilderness, no questions asked?
dumb.
but this book wasn’t the worst. there were some good scenes, and the last line alone was enough to keep me interested in where this will go.
this probably needs major editing—i am on an unfamiliar computer in an unfamiliar town and everything is strange…maybe i will revise when i get home. until then…endure…
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