The Taker by Alma Katsu starts off with a sit-up-and-notice, can't-wait-to-see-what-happens-next beginning. A woman in the emergency room is a suspect for murder and begs the doctor to help her escape from the authorities. To get him to listen to her wild, improbable tale, she cuts herself in front of him with a scalpel and he watches as the cut heals itself in front of his eyes. Having caught his attention, she then tells him is the story of her true love for a beautiful man that has lasted for over two centuries.
The center, the axis on which Lanny's world and her motivation, and thus the entirety of The Taker, pivot is her unrequited love, Jonathan. So he must be the most fascinating creature in The Taker right? He must be to have captured her heart and soul so completely for centuries. Yet other than his unearthly beauty, which does become very important to the plot, I could see no reason for Lanny's dangerous obsession with Jonathan.
"I knew Jonathan had the ability to burn me up with the brilliance of his attention, like a flame to paper. A girl could be destroyed in the instant of divine love. The question was, was it worth it?
"You might ask if I loved Jonathan for his beauty, and I would answer: that is a pointless question, for his great, uncommon beauty was an irreducible part of the whole...if his beauty drew my eye from the first, I'll not apologize for it, nor will I apologize for my desire to claim Jonathan for my own. To behold such beauty is to wish to possess it; it's desire that drives every collector. And I was hardly alone. Nearly every person who came to know Jonathan tried to possess him. This was his curse, and the curse of every person who loved him. But it was like being in love with the sun: brilliant and intoxicating to be near, but impossible to keep to oneself. It was hopeless to love him and yet it was hopeless not to.
"And so I was afflicted by Jonathan's curse, caught up in his terrible attraction, and both of us were doomed to suffer for it."
He is a feckless player for most of The Taker, uncommonly good-looking, but nothing special. Towards the end, and I mean within the last two chapters do we see a Jonathan worth loving, worth dying for, worth risking your soul for. Unfortunately, we do not witness his evolution; just a before and after.
Nor do we see Lanny evolve either. She's besotted in the beginning and gets in trouble for it. She's besotted in the middle and gets in trouble for it. She's besotted in the end and gets in trouble for it. You have centuries to live, fortune to spend, and eternal youth... and yet you live an empty, purposeless life pining for a ne'er-do-well? It seems like such a waste, especially since she's an otherwise intelligent and feisty woman. Time and again her obsession with Jonathan leads her to the edge and over, all in the name of love.
A very dynamic, if not likeable, character is the villainous Adair who mysteriously comes into Lanore's and Jonathan's lives. Finding out the dangerous secrets he holds is more compelling than any scene with Jonathan, as he is the source of the dark magic central to the story. Adair possesses the key to immortality, which is never fully explained. However, since The Taker is the first of a trilogy, I'm sure we'll know more in the coming books.
The synopsis promises a dark, dark tale of obsession and The Taker does deliver; however - What ultimately made me want to stop reading - made me want to, though I didn't because I almost always finish what I start - are the sadistic sexual scenes. I'll concede that they could have been much more graphically written than they were, but by the middle of the book, I felt oversaturated by them. It could be a matter of personal taste but it was just too much depravity for me.
Towards the end, there were shocking, clever twists that I did not see coming- very well done if a bit rushed through.
