Review: The Hunt by Andrew Fukuda

Against all odds, 17-year-old Gene has survived in a world where humans have been eaten to near extinction by the general population. The only remaining humans, or hepers as they are known, are housed in domes on the savannah and studied at the nearby Heper Institute. Every decade there is a government sponsored hunt. When Gene is selected to be one of the combatants he must learn the art of the hunt but also elude his fellow competitors whose suspicions about his true nature are growing.

Some time ago I received the monthly blogger's email from the nice people at Simon and Schuster and The Hunt jumped out at me because of the above blurb. Normally I wouldn't get so excited about a vampire book (Department 19 being the obvious exception) as I feel that YA writers have sucked (pun intended) all of the gruesome fun out of the genre, turning what should be vicious, bloodthirsty monsters into insipid, pretty-boys, who are only one step away from being in a Mills & Boon novel. However, from its blurb The Hunt struck me as being similar in theme to Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, or the film Daybreakers, and I crossed my fingers in the hope that there would be blood, and lots of it.

When the booked arrived I couldn't help but feel dismay. Just look at the cover. That overly attractive male model screams pretty-boy, and so the book sat on my shelf for some time as other, more boy-friendly-looking books were promoted over it. However, last week I finally decided I was in the mood to give it a try, and even now, writing this review, I am still struggling to contain the maniacal laughter that has wanted to burst from deep within me ever since. What's was so funny? I hear you ask. Simple - the thought of all those girly teenage Twilight fans picking this book up, thinking they are going to be treated to a vampire-themed romance and instead being subjected to a brutal gore-fest that will have them waking screaming in the night. (OK, the responsible teacher part of me will also make sure my school librarian knows to mention this to any young girls who decide to give The Hunt a try).

After a great, attention grabbing opening chapter, the first part of the book moves at a fairly slow pace. At first I wasn't sure about this, but the further I got through this part of the book, the more I felt the discomfort grow and grow. The story is told in the first person by Gene (although we don't know his name for quite a lot of the book), a teen boy who is possibly the last remaining human in a world where vampires have taken over (although they are never referred to as vampires - in this world they are the norm, they are just people). This first handful of chapters introduce us to the difficult life that Gene has to lead just to survive. Before being bitten and running off into the night to destroy himself, Gene's father drilled into him a set of survival rules which Gene must follow to the letter if he is to avoid being torn apart by his peers. You see Gene does not hide out in a remote mountain hut, he lives in a suburban house, and attends school daily nightly. Every night he sits in lessons with other teenagers who would literally tear him apart if they realised he was human (or heper). He avoids detection by going through his daily pre-school ritual, which includes polishing his fake fangs, shaving hair from his face, legs, arms, etc, masking his body odour and so on. What Andrew Fukuda did in these opening chapters was instil in me a sense of very uncomfortable dread - surely there was no way that Gene was going to survive indefinitely? Surely it would only be a matter of time before the blood splatter hit the fan? As such I was on tenterhooks, page after page, fearing the worst.

It was fortunate that the story gripped me like this as otherwise I may have given up on it early on, as a little voice in the back of my head kept on whispering that it might be just a Hunger Games rip-off. The premise is similar - every ten years a group of people (aka vampires) are selected at random to take part in the Heper Hunt, an event designed purely to keep the Ruler in good favour with his people. The winner is the person who can kill the most hepers. However, my fears were soon allayed (forget Hunger Games - thankfully it is much closer in theme to I Am Legend) when Gene was taken to the Heper Institute and the process of initiation began. 

The period of initiation takes up the majority of the rest of the book, with Gene surrounded by heper-hungry vamps, but without his survival kit of razor, deodorising paste, or even that most essential of items for humans - water. Thus he spends almost every minute of every night fearing that at any moment one of his fellow hunters may see through his act. As I said before, these vampires are violent. Actually, violent doesn't even come close - unlike many vampires they have an animalistic urge to tear hepers apart, and their bodies react to even the slightest whiff of heper. Cue lots of drool, flying saliva, gnashing teeth, and so on.

I don't want to say much more about the story as I could very easily give away some of the key plot twists. Suffice to say I think Andrew Fukuda has managed to breathe life into the slightly worn out vampire mythos, with his tight plotting and skill at building suspense for his reader. I have to say though that I was disappointed that we aren't told more about this dystopian society, and especially how it came into being. Quite often I found myself with a question about the world or its inhabitants that I hoped would be answered, only to be disappointed. There were also several other elements slipped in here and there that had me wondering where the author was going, again only to find that the reveal was not to be. The book does end on something of a cliffhanger, so I am hoping that my questions will all be answered in the sequel, a book I am already impatient to read.

News: Book Cover for GRYMM by Keith Austin

Back in January I attended the RHCB Bloggers' Brunch, during which the RHCB team waxed lyrical about some of their 2012 releases. One of the books that I starred multiple times in the set of book blurbs they gave us is GRYMM by Keith Austin, and today I spotted the cover on Keith's blog and felt I just had to share it with you (even though it has been on there since January). The RHCB team described GRYMM as a darkly humorous horror story, in the vein of The League of Gentlemen. As a huge fan of said TV comedy show I was sold immediately, so I was looking forward to reading it even without seeing this brilliant cover, or reading the blurb. GRYMM is due to be published in July... I can't wait! Once you've let you eyes feast on this great cover you could do a lot worse than head on over to the RHCB blog and read a little more about the inspiration behind GRYMM in Keith's own words..

The small mining town of Grymm perched on the very edge of the Great Desert is the kind of town you leave - but when Dad gets a three-month contract in the mine there, Mina and Jacob, unwilling stepbrother and sister, are reluctantly arriving.

From a grotesque letting agent who seems to want to eat their baby brother, a cafe owner whose milkshakes contain actual maggots and the horribly creepy butcher, baker and candlestick-maker, Mina and Jacob soon realize that nothing in Grymm is what is appears to be.

And then things get seriously weird when their baby brother disappears - and no one seems to even notice! In Grymm, your worst nightmares really do come true . . .

Guest Post by Craig Simpson (author of the Special Operations series)

I am a huge fan of Craig Simpson's Special Operations series. I had the luxury of discovering the series three books in, and so could read them all in one go, although this did then leave me waiting impatiently for the fourth book. You can read my reviews of the first three books here, and the fourth book, Dead or Alive, here. I therefore jumped at the chance to host Craig for a guest post, especially given the subject of why boys continue to find war stories so thrilling.

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Scary times! Why stories about the Second World War remain so popular with boys.

Seventy years on, young readers are still avidly devouring stories set during WWII, and every year new titles are published to satisfy their insatiable appetites. As a writer of such novels, I think I know why this is, and it comes as no surprise to me, despite the fact that we all know how the war ended! And I think the reasons go deeper than simply boys liking stories about war, armies, aircraft etc…

Post-war children’s classics such as Goodnight Mister Tom, Nina Bowden’s Carrie’s War and Robert Westall’s The Machine Gunners & Blitz Cat tended to focus on the ‘war at home’ in Britain. In fact, it might be said that in the immediate post-war decades (to the 1980s), children’s literature largely steered clear of the worst aspects of war. It was as if Anne Frank’s diary had the role of giving that kind of insight. And, of course, it does, but only to a point. This cautious approach was understandable to a generation of adults who’d lived and fought, were weary of war, and desperate to protect their children from such horrors. But, I believe they missed an important point.

I grew up in this post-war period but was fortunate to hear stories first hand; one of my teachers had been in the RAF and flown Pathfinders. I also heard stories about family friends; one of my godmothers had worked for the French Resistance. Later on in life, I was privileged enough to meet the wonderful Miep Gies who famously helped the Frank family while they were in hiding and who rescued Anne’s diary from the Annex. They were remarkable people.

In recent times, the nature of wartime children’s literature has changed. With titles like Mal Peet’s Tamar, John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, James Holland’s Duty Calls series, Robert Muchamore’s Henderson’s Boys, and my own Resistance & Special Operations series (just to name a few), stories have reached out into the heart of the conflict. Interestingly, readers often say to me that what they like about my books is that my characters get involved with the war, that they’re not just innocent bystanders. This aspect is important to me too, because it’s easy to forget that a whole generation of children lived through Nazi occupation and witnessed all aspects of war, and many did indeed get involved with resisting. In response to my books, I’ve even received correspondence from older readers telling me stories of when, as teenagers, members of their family had worked for the resistance, risking their lives. They tell me this with immense and justifiable pride. Vindication, I think.

At their heart, the majority of WWII stories explore some of the most powerful and appealing themes in storytelling; personal fears, danger and sacrifice, the struggle of good versus evil, the defence of freedom, and testing ones courage to the limit. To be fair, this is also true of many books of other genres (science fiction, fantasy). In fact, pick any fiction book from a library shelf and I bet it explores at least one of these themes in some way. But, there are key differences in the case of stories set in WWII.

Firstly, it was a world that really existed, is still recognisable to us today, and is within living memory for some parents and grandparents. It was also all-out war on an unprecedented and almost unimaginable scale, not witnessed before or since. The very worst aspects of mankind’s nature were exposed in its horrors and, yet, in the midst of the darkness, the very best of mankind shone through and triumphed.

It’s the fact that such a time really existed that I find so captivating, thrilling, and often extremely scary, and I think readers do too. As a writer I have no need to create some fantasy world, or one of evil monsters or superheroes to have the reader on the edge of his or her seat and biting their nails – the real world back then will do nicely. Put bluntly, it was the mother of all wars – accounting for an estimated 55+ million lives in just six years. And, yet, I don’t think the appeal to readers comes from the scale of the conflict, rather the complete opposite.

It is the stories of individuals caught up in it, the soldier wading towards the beach on D-Day as bullets fly past him and his comrades fall, the Spitfire pilot in the midst of a soaring dogfight, the family in hiding or being arrested and carted off to a concentration camp, the resistance fighter risking all when surrounded by the enemy, or the spy or secret agent on a dangerous mission. Through the eyes of such people (characters) the true nature of war is exposed. The choices and decisions they are forced to make challenge our very moral fibre, questioning our beliefs about who we are and what mankind is capable of. And, despite the fact most of us find war abhorrent, we also know that it can be justified – there are simply some things that are worth fighting for. It is exciting and very, very powerful stuff.

There’s a second element to the enduring popularity. It’s the fantastic ingenuity and courage of those involved. The war was a rich seam of astonishingly original ideas and rapid developments, of incredibly audacious missions and seemingly impossible achievements. Whether it was the evacuation of over 330,000 troops from Dunkirk, the brilliant minds of the code-breakers, the boffins who developed radar, the celebrated dam busters (Barnes Wallis’s bouncing bomb), or the brave citizens who became active members of resistance movements or who risked their lives while hiding people from arrest, all have truly jaw-dropping stories to tell. Some are well known, others have only recently been revealed as Top Secret documents are released or people have finally broken their silence. For a writer there is an almost endless source of inspiration. For the young reader there are plenty of thrills and spills as this most dangerous of times is brought back to life on the page.

C Simpson April 2012

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Huge thanks to Craig for taking the time to write this for The Book Zone. If your son is a reluctant reader then the Special Operations books could be the ones to get him hooked.