An Un-Calibrated Centrifuge

*This review contains (very) minor spoilers.

The Hunt is a strange book. It almost felt like a parody at times. Yet I was unable to stop reading it, and I never resorted to skimming.

There are huge plot holes/the world-building, while not terrible just doesn't make sense a lot of the time. I mean, this is a society that can build a huge glass dome that is activated by the sun but they can't make video cameras that don't weigh a ton.

Also, the whole, humans can hide among the vampires bit doesn't make sense unless no one gets their periods in this world. And the vampires' (I don't think they're ever called vampires in the book, but that's what they are) powers are inconsistent. A good scrubbing will keep a human safe in their presence, but a drop of blood can be sensed between floors of buildings.

Fukuda uses a few Britishisms. That combined with mentions of hyenas, bananas (potentially growing near a desert?), cheetahs, Joshua trees, prairie dogs made it impossible for me to decide on a plausible fake location for the story. This wasn't too annoying, but whenever a strange element (particularly the banana) was mentioned, it made me want more about the world. Though I do appreciate that Fukuda doesn't resort to an info dump at the beginning of the book.

Fukuda ends a few sentences with prepositions. I'm not against breaking grammar rules, but whenever he ends a sentence with a preposition, the sentences feel incomplete. He technically passes the Star Wars test, but I wish this book had gone a little further. The Hunt is mostly over at the end, and there's a twist that made me want to keep reading, but the Hunt's Death Star destruction could have been stronger.

And I wish Fukuda had written more characters of color. He doesn't go into too much description with any of the characters, so most of them can be read however you want, but of course that means that most people will default to white for all of them. A few explicit descriptions would have been nice.

All of these are pretty minor complaints, even added up they weren't enough to stop me from reading the book. I'm glad I have the next one out from the library so I can start it right away tomorrow.