Asian American Literature Fans

A Review of Erin Summerill’s Ever the Hunted (Houghton Mifflin for Young Readers, 2017).
By Stephen Hong Sohn

So, Erin Summerill’s debut Ever the Hunted comes out of Houghton Mifflin, which has been a press that really hasn’t cultivated a larger young adult fiction catalogue, at least quite yet. Ever the Hunted is part of the ever-expanding paranormal young adult romance genre. We’ll let Goodreads provide us with our plot description: “Seventeen year-old Britta Flannery is at ease only in the woods with her dagger and bow. She spends her days tracking criminals alongside her father, the legendary bounty hunter for the King of Malam—that is, until her father is murdered. Now outcast and alone and having no rights to her father’s land or inheritance, she seeks refuge where she feels most safe: the Ever Woods. When Britta is caught poaching by the royal guard, instead of facing the noose she is offered a deal: her freedom in exchange for her father’s killer. However, it’s not so simple. The alleged killer is none other than Cohen McKay, her father’s former apprentice. The only friend she’s ever known. The boy she once loved who broke her heart. She must go on a dangerous quest in a world of warring kingdoms, mad kings, and dark magic to find the real killer. But Britta wields more power than she knows. And soon she will learn what has always made her different will make her a daunting and dangerous force.”  

Now, Summerill knows the formula she needs to work with. Britta is the ordinary, not-so-ordinary teen heroine, who must go on a mission to defeat a danger foe, while also somehow snagging the affections of a handsome fellow lad. Those who seek the formulaic will be rewarded. Sure, Summerill proves to have specific tricks up her sleeve. Her world building includes magical channelers and two almost warring kingdoms (Malam vs. Shaerdan), so she generates her approach to the genre. What may split devotees of this debut is the romance plot. Sure, it’s requisite, but there are lines where the romantic melodrama and the telegraphed coupling between our major characters seems heavy-handed. If you can’t take lines like “his words are an arrow to the heart,” then you’re going to want to skip this one. My attitude is that such romantic entanglements and their discursive eruptions are unavoidable, and I tend to treat them comically.

As with any work in this genre, the real question, at least from my perspective as a cultural critic, is the value of the story in relation to our own world. In this respect, the novel does call attention to the regimes of value placed on social identities. The channelers, in particular, are considered by Malams to be perversions and are summarily executed. Since channelers are invariably women, Summerill’s work recalls the fanaticism that swept communities up in the early colonial period, especially with respect to women who were considered to be witches. Summerill certainly seems to be drawing from this lineage and going obviously a little bit further, by showing us female characters, whose magical powers are not necessarily used for evil intent. The debut is, however much you might despise (or not) the romance plots, eminently readable, and I’ll be certain to pick up the next in the series to see what happens to our indefatigable heroine and her dashing “boulder-like”—you’ll have to read this book to understand that reference—romantic counterpart.

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Review Author: Stephen Hong Sohn
Review Editor: Leslie J. Fernandez

If you have any questions or want us to consider your book for review, please don’t hesitate to contact us via email!
Prof. Stephen Hong Sohn at ssohnucr@gmail.com
Leslie J. Fernandez, PhD Student in English, at lfern010@ucr.edu