THE HUNT by Andrew Fukuda

REVIEW: THE HUNT by Andrew Fukuda

THE HUNT
by Andrew Fukuda
Release Date: May 8th, 2012

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Don’t Sweat. Don’t Laugh. Don’t draw attention to yourself. And most of all, whatever you do, do not fall in love with one of them.Gene is different from everyone else around him. He can’t run with lightning speed, sunlight doesn’t hurt him and he doesn’t have an unquenchable lust for blood. Gene is a human, and he knows the rules. Keep the truth a secret. It’s the only way to stay alive in a world of night—a world where humans are considered a delicacy and hunted for their blood.
When he’s chosen for a once in a lifetime opportunity to hunt the last remaining humans, Gene’s carefully constructed life begins to crumble around him. He’s thrust into the path of a girl who makes him feel things he never thought possible—and into a ruthless pack of hunters whose suspicions about his true nature are growing. Now that Gene has finally found something worth fighting for, his need to survive is stronger than ever—but is it worth the cost of his humanity?

The Hunt by Andrew Fukuda is one heck of a freaky read. If I would recommend one thing really it would be to not read this alone with a majority of the lights off at night! I was pretty surprised with how much I did enjoy this novel because let’s face it vampire has been done to death. For the last 5 years really all I have seen is Vampire, Vampire, and, oh yeah, Vampire but never I have I found a story that totally decided to scrap everything and try to create something completely different.

The first thing that really hooked me in this book was how it started. It reads like a horror story in the beginning and just continues on with that tone. Gene is not like everyone else. He lives alone. He has no friends. And he sweats. Sadly it is not his sweating that is an issue, but the fact that he is a human stuck in a vampire filled world. Vampires reign supreme in this post-apocalyptic world, and everyone seems to have adapted fine except for Gene. Gene is known as a “heper” (crude term for human as used by the vampires), and has been surviving on his own thanks to a list of rules established by his father before his “adaptation”. Gene can’t risk doing things that come naturally: he can’t sweat, laugh or even risk clearing his throat. He can’t risk showing any type of fear of vampires, and so far he has done a good job of it until the night he is chosen for the ultimate honor – The Heper Hunt. The Hunt is similar to a lottery, where vampires are given a sheet of numbers and the numbers are randomly chosen, but the prize is far worse for Gene: the winners must participate in hunting down and killing hepers a.k.a. humans!

Let me just say that this book really kept me on the edge of my seat. Literally there is not one moment when Gene feels completely safe; he is always on edge and can never just be a regular teenager. He knows no other humans, and tries to not get close to any of the vampires either; seriously he refers to the vampires by either their appearance or how they act. What did surprise me a bit was how similar the vampires modeled their society after our own. The main different really is that everything now happens at night because . . . . well . . . . they are vampires. Which kind of makes me wonder why Gene is so keen on remaining human in the first place?

It is never really touched upon what happens when a person turns into a vampire – do they lose their humanity? Can they not feel emotions anymore? Are they just now purely evil beings whose only desire is to feast on blood? The really only downside I see is the amount of drool flowing from the vampires’ mouths, and in that case I would just bring a cup with me to school. Fukuda never really makes being a human seem all that appealing. Gene is alone and cannot make any real companions because of his fear of being discovered and drained of all his blood. But Gene has kind of adopted the persona of being a vampire . . . heck even as a kid he was referring to humans as “hepers” and thought it was normal. So if you are all alone in the world, your family is dead and you are always on-edge, than what is your reasoning for remaining human?

A majority of this book focuses on Gene interacting with and surviving around other vampires. The actual Hunt does not occur until the last 50 pages of the book but that does not mean that the book reads slowly. The edge is always there and it only increases as Gene is basically confined to a compound of vampires, where he has to literally sweat it out. There are a number of revelations in this ‘down-time’ (not gonna spoil it all) and readers will come to understand a bit more about Gene and others around him, which really is what drives the story for me. Everyone has their own secret motives for the Hunt, and not everyone makes it there alive. But this book is really about Gene’s growth and development; his acceptance of his own humanity and using that to his strength is something that Gene really learns to understand. And really what he finally learns at the end really makes me hunger for the next book!

And let me just say these vampires are not all perfect and modeled after ‘Adonis’ or any other Greek god. They have imperfections, which I really enjoyed. Too long have I read books where the vampires were described as being “godlike” and “beautiful creatures”. Here the vampires are scary, like shivers down your spine scary. These creatures are ruthless and almost barbaric with their treatment and ideas of humans, and their animal-like qualities are shown more and more as the book progresses. There are no real redeemable qualities for these vampires; Gene does not have a vampire ally, who is the exception to the previous vampires encountered in the book, like I am sure most readers are probably expecting. No, this is clearly humans vs. vampires, with humanity on the far losing side.

If you are looking for a book that keeps the edge high, the vampires gut-wrenchingly vicious, and gives off that “trust no one” vibe, then THE HUNT is definitely a book worth checking out!   

RATING

4 out of 5