Hunted, by PC and Kristin Cast

[tea_and_tomes]

(Buy from Amazon.ca)

Summary: (Taken from GoodReads) The good news: Zoey’s friends have her back again and Stevie Rae and the red fledglings aren’t Neferet’s secrets any longer. The bad news: Ancient evil with the face of an angel has been let loose – that and various other nasties (whose faces aren’t so angelic). Grandma Redbird is in trouble. Heath is in trouble. The House of Night is in trouble. Okay, let’s face it – Zoey’s whole world is in trouble! But when the trouble comes from a being who appears to be beauty personified, will the world believe it? Especially when only a teenager and a group of misfits are the only ones who really understand the danger he brings. Will Zoey have the strength and wisdom to reveal the truth? Especially when, in the House of Night, the truth is often hard to come by...

Thoughts: While this book wasn't what I'd really call slow, it did seem slower than the previous books in the series, proceding at a calmer pace with few exceptions. The beginning was a bit tedious, and it seemed the amount of circular discussion was little more than padding for a higher page-count, but this was redeemed later when the generally sedate pace was shattered a few times by serious and chaotic events.

The ending of this book can be likened to a season finale. Most of the plot has been tied up, the immediate danger has passed, but there are still questions unanswered and things left unfinished, and there's still plenty of potential for the story to go on. That's why, I suppose, there are still two books out in this series that I have yet to read, though.

I admit the ending was a little cheesy, the power of love overcoming the power of darkness in a very obvious way. But from what I've seen of the series so far, that doesn't mean it was a "hammered home" moral message. This series does a good job of expressing realistic ambiguous morality. Jerks can be on the side of good, people doubt each other and their motives, and things are not always as good or bad as they seem. So perhaps the events at the tail end of the book will end up haing far-reaching consequences that are not as bright and happy as they may at first seem, and I'm interested to see how accurate that thought turns out to be.

One thing to note, though, and I'm not sure where the fault -- if it can be called so -- lies here, but the prophecies and poems that pop up frequently are getting much easier to interpret. I'm not sure if that's because I'm able to see things from the perspective of the outsider, the observer who isn't preoccupied with the fight to stay alive, or if it's because the authors are just making them really obvious to figure out. Yes, sometimes they throw me a little (I actually felt sure for a time that the "Night" in Kramisha's poem refered to Erik, what with his last name actually being Night and Damien mentioning that the aspects mentioned in the poem were likely to be people), but for the most part, I'm seeing well in advance what the characters realise only at the very last second.

Such is the way of prophecies, though. They're either ridiculously hard to interpret, or ridiculously easy. They may be an overused plot element, but they're bloody hard to pull off in a way that leaves the reader guessing at anything while still having them make sense in the end.

And now, on to book 6. I'm so close to the end of this series I can taste it!