The Dream Hunter Summary: In the ethereal world of dreams, there are champions who fight to protect the dreamer and there are demons who prey on them...
Arik is such a predator. Condemned by the gods to live eternity without emotions, Arik can only feel when he's in the dreams of others. For thousands of years, he's drifted through the human unconscious, searching for sensation. Now he's finally found a dreamer whose vivid mind can fill his emptiness.
Dr. Megeara Kafieri watched her father ruin himself and his reputation as he searched to prove Atlantis was real. Her deathbed promise to him to salvage his reputation has now brought her to Greece where she intends to prove once and for all that the fabled island is right where her father said it was. But frustration and bad luck dog her every step. Especially the day they find a stranger floating in the sea. His is a face she's seen many times.... in her dreams.
What she doesn't know is that Arik holds more than the ancient secrets that can help her find the mythical isle of Atlantis. He has made a pact with the god Hades: In exchange for two weeks as a mortal man, he must return to Olympus with a human soul. Megeara's soul.
With a secret society out to ruin her expedition, and mysterious accidents that keep threatening her life, Megeara refuses to quit. She knows she's getting closer to Atlantis and as she does, she stumbles onto the truth of what Arik really is.
For Arik his quest is no longer simple. No human can know of a Dream-Hunter's existence. His dream of being mortal has quickly turned into his own nightmare and the only way to save himself will be to sacrifice the very thing he wanted to be human for. The only question is, will he?
The Dream Hunter Review:
The Dream Hunter was an interesting read to say the least, and not always in the best way. The plot line was VERY interesting, same with the secondary characters. I can't say the same for the main characters. It is important to note that this book goes back before the first DH novel, back when Nick was still 24.
At this point, it is getting a bit irritating to have the same introduction about Were, Daimons and Apollites in every book. I understand that it is made for new readers, but for some of us it gets irritating because we have already know this information. Anyways, if you manage to skim over this, the story gets much better than the explanation. It starts off interesting enough with a Gaery (heroine) sleeping with Arik (hero) in her dreams. He is a skytos, a dream hunter that feeds off human emotion because he comes from a race that has no emotions. Arik then literally sells Gaery's soul to Hades so that he can spend 2 weeks with her. This is somewhat understandable because he knows no compassion and has no idea the value of a soul.
We then watch him stumble through him discover of human emotions and feelings. It was quite entertaining actually but other than that he didn't have much substance. For example, his non-existent love story between him and Gaery. I did love his relationship with Tory and Solin though. It was great to see him learn sarcasm, deal with young girls and figure put what friendship was. I also loved how he acted with characters like Ash, Kyrian and Nick. If there were more scenes like this, the book could have been more interesting.
What I didn't like about Arik was his reaction to Gaery. While it was quite amusing to see him stumble to impress Gaery, he doesn't seem to care too much about her. Don't get me wrong, by the end of the novel they did work to love each other, but from the start Arik only wanted to have sex with her. You would think that after 27,000 years he would learn something about humans or DH cause they do have similar mannerisms, and how one should interact with them. Also, I can forgive giving away a human soul at the time, but he made an extremely stupid choice by bargaining with a god. He is old enough to know better yet foolishly makes the same choice. In conclusion, he wasn't the strong alpha type from previous books and his innocence was fascinating, the rest of him was very 2D making him quite weak in some aspects.
Gaery on the other hand was just irritating. She hated on her father for ruining her life but continued on his mission instead and pretended it was the best thing. Also, I know she has an extensive background, but it seemed like she was her justification for think she found Atlantis was based on something being old, or ideas like that. She was also incredibly uptight, and this up until the last couple of chapters. I can understand characters be suspicious of others up to a point but she was rude, suspicious and demeaning to him for a long time. Even her 15 year old cousin, Tory had more sense than her.
The plot itself moved irritatingly slow and there was hardly any action. The only good battle is the last one and it was over in a matter of minutes. Another problem I had with this book was the fact that Arik and Gaery had to rely heavily on secondary characters. That does happening in other books to a certain extent, nevertheless you have to give the main characters to stand up for themselves. Almost all of their problems could have been solved without anyone's help yet it wasn't.
That leads to the best part of the series, and frankly what made it worthwhile, the secondary characters. Beings like Kat, Tory, Solin, ZT, Apollymi were an integral part of this story and I loved how they made brief but life changing scenes. Solin was probably the biggest surprise. A man with MANY secrets, he does live life to it's fullest while still holding back from going over. I hope that we get to see a lot more of him! This with all the mythology and world building in this novel, it was a pretty good book.
Overall it was 3.5-4 star book, no matter how the main characters were acting.
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