Ever the Hunted by
Erin Summerill
My rating:
2 of 5 stars
Such a poor beginning for another year of reading. I hoped it would be enjoyable at he very least, if not something special. Instead, the book is full of cliché. No, the entire book is one big cliché.
My main huge problem with this book manifested just a few pages on. Why on earth Ms. Summerill would choose to write about hunters and trackers, when she herself has never stepped off a paved road? It makes absolutely no sense to me. If she wanted to imagine something completely different from her everyday experience or add the sense of adventure to the story, she should have done sone research. Or maybe take a walk in a park and look up and around for a change. Because it's really apparent that she doesn't understand how tracking works. Or what skills it takes to live in the woods. Or how distances work. Or how normal people pack to cross a known day-long dry area ahead. Or... a number of other things.
Related to this problem is the world-building. Two kingdoms at war for no apparent reason are cliché enough, but it's worse than that. The solid physical foundation of this world is not all that solid. The scale and relative scale on the map and travel times in the book don't check out, at all. The two kingdoms are the size of a modern city. Our heroes can cover the same distance in a week, two weeks, or a day or two, all the time riding as hard as possible. The weather patterns and, not surprisingly, astronomical observations also make no sense. Since the author doesn't make any attempts to explain it all, including it into her imaginary universe, I can only write it off to sloppiness.
There is of course a group of evil people in this universe, who want to start a war. The one thing the reader doesn't get is the reason. Isn't an antagonist supposed to have some reasons too? Preferably objective, like benefitting from the war in some way that would overweigh the risks, but I would accept some personal reasons too. Maybe the author is in the process of creating the reasons, because they are left for the next book (I hope).
Neither the characters nor the 'romance' were of any interest for me. Basically, a stupid 'young' woman is rushing around doing stupid things. Her age and inexperience are the most common cliché in this type of books. Let's face it, we either talk about a feudal rural society with lords and kings, or an eighteen year old is considered young. I'm so tired of authors applying current standards and moral (not upheld by everyone even now) to societies completely not suitable for them. About the rest of the characters we don't know much. One person was likable in the book, but the author killed her off, probably in fear that she would outshine the heroine.
All in all it was a relatively good written, but boring story about a non-too-special character with very special magical powers she will have to learn about way too late in her life. Sounds familiar?
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