I received this free from the publishers via NetGalley

Quin has been training all her life to be a 'seeker', a purpose she believes is honorable and noble, yet when the day comes to take her oath everything she believed about being a 'seeker' was false and her world has turned upside down. Her adventure takes her across the world from Scotland to Honk Kong to There.

I'm a bit unsure of what to write in this review. For the majority of the book I was left confused and the story just didn't really seem to make any sense to me? At about 50% I started to skim read because I was just not enjoying it. While the first 10% grabbed my interest, it just went downhill from there. The majority of the book just seemed to want to keep what a Seeker is a mystery. What is a Seeker?

Spoiler

an Assassin I'm assuming

And while it hinted at it, it took far too long for them to come out with it. They did a task to swear their oath, and they ended up covered in blood and vomiting, but it took far too long to actually get told what they did. I felt like I missed pages or something because the jump from the start of the task to the end was so sudden. Ok, Quin killed people, but why? Who were they? Too many questions get answered too late in my opinion. But even so, what did Quin think a Seeker was in the first place? It wasn't suspenseful, but rather irritating.

The magic seemed to be explained poorly as well. The world building was very poor, I didn't understand the setting, was it steampunk? It seemed to be medieval, but I'm not so sure, was it actually the future? I still have no clue. All this really took away from my enjoyment of Seeker. Also, I don't really understand what the Dreads were, just mediators? But they couldn't intervene in anything?

I wasn't really fond of the characters, and I definitely did not connect with any of them. I really disliked Quin and her father's relationship. A 'obey me because I say so' type of relationship, and Quin doesn't really question that? Or stray too much from that thought. Other characters weren't impressive either, one ended up an opium addict, another turned from a love interest to Quin to the antagonist of the story. While I get his motivations, there just seemed to be little depth and he was willing to betray the ones he loved, well supposedly, so quickly. So , little depth or development for the characters which stopped me empathizing or connecting with them.

Overall, a book I wouldn't personally recommend. Poor world building, poor writing, poor plot and structure, and poor characters and development.