In full disclosure, this is a kind of "half" review in the sense that I have read The Hunt by Andrew Fukuda, but have not yet read the second book in the series, The Prey. And it may be unfair to comment on the first book without having read the second. I'm going to get around to it but it's not on the top of my list at the moment. Not because The Hunt wasn't a good book. It was. It was fast-paced and eminently readable. It simply didn't grab me the same way as some other recent sci-fi dystopias for the YA audience have.
The Hunt might be described - and probably already has been - as a cross between Twilight (or at least some vampire story with evil vampires) and The Hunger Games. The twist is that the main society in this dystopia is comprised of vampires and they have a ritual hunt to kill a bunch of what they call hepers, but you can probably already guess what hepers really are. A group of young folks are selected to participate in the titular hunt and to kill or maim each other and all of the hepers who have been raised in captivity for the purposes of the event. Our hero - Gene - is a heper disguised as a vampire in order to survive in the society. His challenge is to make sure he hides the fact that he doesn't have super-strength, and that he does have body hair and body odor amongst other things. This is a great example of an author putting his hero up in a tree and throwing more and more rocks at him until the reader almost can't bear it. Gene is put into situations where it's increasingly difficult to hide what he is, and consistently comes up with clever ways around the problem. During the preparations for the hunt, the reader discovers a lot of mysterious things about the society itself and about Gene and his background in particular. The ending is satisfying enough in and of itself, although it is clearly a set-up for the sequel. And at least one poor character is left in an unenviable position which hopefully gets resolved in the next installment. So, yes, the book is well-written, fast paced with characters I can care about. But it's a little derivative and didn't excite me quite as much as some other YA dystopias in recent years.
The Hunt might be described - and probably already has been - as a cross between Twilight (or at least some vampire story with evil vampires) and The Hunger Games. The twist is that the main society in this dystopia is comprised of vampires and they have a ritual hunt to kill a bunch of what they call hepers, but you can probably already guess what hepers really are. A group of young folks are selected to participate in the titular hunt and to kill or maim each other and all of the hepers who have been raised in captivity for the purposes of the event. Our hero - Gene - is a heper disguised as a vampire in order to survive in the society. His challenge is to make sure he hides the fact that he doesn't have super-strength, and that he does have body hair and body odor amongst other things. This is a great example of an author putting his hero up in a tree and throwing more and more rocks at him until the reader almost can't bear it. Gene is put into situations where it's increasingly difficult to hide what he is, and consistently comes up with clever ways around the problem. During the preparations for the hunt, the reader discovers a lot of mysterious things about the society itself and about Gene and his background in particular. The ending is satisfying enough in and of itself, although it is clearly a set-up for the sequel. And at least one poor character is left in an unenviable position which hopefully gets resolved in the next installment. So, yes, the book is well-written, fast paced with characters I can care about. But it's a little derivative and didn't excite me quite as much as some other YA dystopias in recent years.
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