Review – The Hunt (The Cage, Book 2) by Megan Shepherd (3/5 stars)
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Science Fiction
Length: 368 pages
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Release Date: May 24, 2016
ISBN-13: 978-0062243089
Stand Alone or Series: 2nd book in The Cage series
Source: Gift for Birthday
Rating: 3/5 stars
“After their failed escape attempt, Cora, Lucky, and Mali have been demoted to the lowest level of human captives and placed in a safari-themed environment called the Hunt, along with wild animals and other human outcasts. They must serve new Kindred masters—Cora as a lounge singer, Lucky as an animal wrangler, and Mali as a safari guide—and follow new rules or face dangerous consequences. Meanwhile, Nok and Rolf have been moved into an enormous dollhouse, observed around the clock by Kindred scientists interested in Nok’s pregnancy. And Leon, the only one who successfully escaped, has teamed up with villainous Mosca black-market traders.
The former inhabitants of the Cage are threatened on all fronts—and maybe worst of all, one of the Hunt’s Kindred safari guests begins to play a twisted game of cat and mouse with Cora. Separated and constantly under watch, she and the others must struggle to stay alive, never mind find a way back to each other. When Cassian secretly offers to train Cora to develop her psychic abilities—to prove the worthiness of humanity in a series of tests called the Gauntlet—she’ll have to decide fast if she dares to trust the Kindred who betrayed her, or if she can forge her own way to freedom. “
This book wasn’t as good as the first book in the series. Cora is trying to balance serving as a lounge singer in the menagerie The Hunt and spending time learning to use her telekinetic abilities in secret lessons with Cassian. It felt like there was a lot of waiting for something to happen in this book.
The whole books seems to be building to Cora running through the Gauntlet; a series of trials that are supposed to tell whether or not a species is intelligent enough to be considered one of the main species and gain full rights. With all this build up toward the Gauntlet (which I was looking forward to), I ended up being disappointed by the sudden change in direction that the story took towards the end.
The story jumps around between all of the different characters and, while this worked okay, it didn’t work great. You never get to really engage with any of the characters all that well. Cassian also wasn’t in the story a ton which I found disappointing.
Given how much I loved the first book, I was somewhat disappointed in this book. It was okay but I just found myself struggling to stay engaged in the story. This book is pretty much straight sci-fi with none of the interesting elements of survival the first book had.
Overall this was an okay continuation of this YA sci-fi series. I didn’t like it as much as the first book and had more trouble engaging with the story. I thought the shift in plot direction towards the end of the book was disappointing as well. Right now I am not sure if I will continue with this series or not. As of right now I have no desire to read more about these characters and story.
This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– You Read How Many Books? Reading Challenge
– New Release Challenge
– Flights of Fantasy Reading Challenge
