The ugly duckling starts out getting picked on and grows up special.  Oh wait, I did that review already today—but "The Seekers" starts with the same premise, as Billy Speers gets made fun of for being "different" from other children, but grows up with special abilities.

The differences between this story and "Limp" which dealt with a similar start for its protagonist, well, they’re as manifestly different as a swan and a duck.  "Limp" was a college coming of age story, while "The Seekers" is a science fiction action adventure.  Billy seems to have unique understandings of mathematics, and so does Kathy, a girl with synesthesia, the ability to experience stimulation with more than one sense.  She sees colours for numbers, and sees spoken words as well as hears them—it’s an interesting (and real) neurological phenomenon.  Some people taste words, some see smells. 

These exceptional children are being watched, and somebody has big plans for them.  The prologue features a team of fighters using high tech equipment that lets them speak to each other over distance, see in infra red, hear music to focus their minds, and this team is hunting a dangerous man named Jackson or Balan, whom the Hunter (possibly Billy twenty years in the future) calls a demon.

The story presents with good action scenes at the start, and the overly-familiar but still suspenseful Clever Antagonist, who plays cat and mouse with his opponents.  The dark atmosphere is palpably written, and there are some hints of interesting science in this science fiction, especially with the synesthesia references.  I’m interested to see where the story leads, as the story has all the elements of a good adventure.  Atmosphere, suspense, action, a few innovative ideas and actual science for details, and some intriguing characters.

My only frustration with the story is the sense of subtext, that the author clearly knows more in every scene than the reader has access to.  Things are deliberately made obscure for suspense purposes, and you can tell the writer has more in his head than what is on the page.  I don’t think that expanding the details in each chapter and being more straight forward would hurt the story.  On the contrary, I think I’d be even more engaged with the text than I already am.

For example, we only get short examples of Billy running around his garden playing pirate, and an even shorter one of him at school getting laughed at.  These are glimpses, and the author could give us long stares instead—extended chapters are readers’ friends.  They are better suited to creating detail, action and atmosphere, all of which leads to better suspense than a glimpse of secrecy.  Given that these things are the writer’s strengths already, I’d like to see them utilized more.

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