Hunted (House of Night) Chapter 21: Everyone Is Out To Get Zoey, But For Real

So you may have noticed that House of Night has started talking about sexual assault a lot. Later on in this post, I go on a rather long aside about this, which means that a large chunk of today’s post has no jokes and talks about how this story may or may not be handling some pretty heavy shit. If you’re not in the mood for that right now, maybe come back to today’s post later. Otherwise, I’m always interested to hear what people think, especially when I have to criticize and analyze stuff that’s slightly out of my wheelhouse.

But first, jokes:

Hunted (House of Night) Chapter 21

After Zoey tries to appeal to whatever’s left of Stark’s humanity and he runs off, she enters the dorm. She asks Darius for his cell phone and calls Stevie Rae to tell her that 1) they’re being watched, and 2) to start the Secret Plan. Because there’s no better way to react to being watched than to have a conversation about what to do about it out loud.

“Right now you gotta listen to me.”
“’ Kay,” she said.
“Do what I told you to do.”
There was a pause and then she said, “What you told me in the note?”
“Yeah. You’re being watched in the tunnels. Something is down there with you.”
I expected her to gasp or freak, but all she said was a calm, “Okay, I understand.”

Oh, huh, Stevie Rae’s actually keeping her end of the conversation pretty spy-proof so far as it turns-

I continued quickly. “There’s a good chance the bird things will grab you if you come out of the tunnels anywhere they’re expecting you to surface, so you’re going to have to be really, really careful.”
“Don’t worry about it, Z. I’ve been doin’ a little secret reconnoitering of my own since you passed me that note. I think I can get everyone there without being seen.”

Nevermind.

Zoey goes on to tell Stevie Rae to call Sister Mary Angela first to tell her that they’re coming. Why doesn’t Zoey do that if she knows Stevie Rae’s the one who’s being watched? Who knows. It’s a total crapshoot whether this will even factor into the plan going south later. There’s still a third of this book left, so plenty of time for things to go wrong for reasons that may or may not even have anything to do with Zoey.

Stevie Rae does get this sweet dig in at Zoey, though.

“Thanks,” I said. “Is Heath okay?”
“Totally. I told ya don’t worry about him. Both of your boyfriends are fine.”
I sighed, wishing I could correct her and tell her I only had one boyfriend.

Fuck it. This slog of a book is hell and if I want to believe that Stevie Rae is teasing Zoey because even the characters in this book are just done with Zoey’s love life being a major part of the plot, then this is the reality I choose to live in.

Zoey goes into the common room and notices that “Normally, after school it would have been crazy busy with fledglings hanging out”, but now there “weren’t many, and those who were sitting around were unusually subdued” and “crouched together, speaking barely above a whisper”. Presumably this is a major change in the general populace because of the arrival of Kalona and the raven mockers, but it’s hard to tell for certain because House of Night hasn’t felt that it was important to spend any time detailing what’s going on in the titular house of night until two-thirds of the way into the book.

Also it’s hard to tell because Zoey has never been a particularly observant narrator…

Part of that might be because the cable had been knocked out by the storm, but the House of Night had some major backup generators, and kids should have been watching DVDs— I mean, hello! Almost everyone had Netflix.

So is this joke supposed to be a distraction from the painfully obvious realization that Kalona et al have fundamentally changed life at the house of night? Because it’s a very painful one. By this point, the story has to play catch up rather than organically let us see how the students are affected by Kalona’s rule. Ideally the story would show this, but the time has passed that it has to tell us what’s new since we were here last. So rather than tease it out, it has to dump dramatic changes on us and immediately act like it’s no big deal. And since half of Zoey’s narration is distracting, pointless jokey asides already… I MEAN, HELLO!

(And “I mean, hello! Almost everyone had Netflix.” Clearly Zoey has never read a Jamie McGuire novel.)

Zoey catches up with Damien and the Twins, who are seemingly comforting the girl that Stark was assaulting. But something very weird is going on: she’s not bothered at all.

“Really, I’m fine. It’s no big deal,” Becca was insisting in a voice that wasn’t shaky and scared anymore, but had suddenly changed to sounding incredibly annoyed.
“No big deal!” Shaunee said. “Of course it was a big deal.”
“The guy attacked you,” Erin said.
“It wasn’t exactly like that,” Becca said, waving her hands dismissively. “We were just messing around. Plus, Stark really is hot.”
Erin snorted. “Yeah, I usually find rapists majorly hot.”
Becca’s eyes narrowed and she looked cold and mean. “Stark is hot, and you’re just jealous that he didn’t want you.”

So… I have some conflicted feelings about this, but… at the moment, I’m kind of inclined to think this might be one of the more clever moves this story has made in a while. At least since it went in the “our primary antagonist is the god of sexual assault” direction.

Let’s read on a bit further before I go into why. Word of warning: there aren’t really any jokes in this next section. Obviously.

Damien seemingly says something very weird…

“Hang on,” Damien spoke up. “You know, Becca’s right. Stark is one hot guy. […] If Becca says they were just messing around, who are we to judge?”

And then much later on in the chapter (First they go to Aphrodite’s room, learn that all the cats on campus are hiding in her room, also Aphrodite shows concern for Darius’s injury when everyone expected her to be shallow… yeah, there’s nothing interesting here that we’re skipping over. Don’t worry about it.), Damien and Aphrodite share their observations about what’s going on with the students ever since Kalona took over.

“You weren’t going to get through to her. Becca’s on their side. As far as I can tell, Stark and the birds and Kalona do anything to anyone, and there are no repercussions for their actions.”
“It’s worse than no repercussions,” Aphrodite said. […] “It’s like Kalona’s cast a spell over everyone, and the spell somehow extends to Stark and the birds.”
“That’s why I agreed with Becca and just let her go. It’s not a good idea to call attention to the fact that we’re the only ones not in the Kalona Fan Club,” Damien said.

Introducing Kalona, a supernatural sexual predator, as the primary antagonist more or less makes House of Night a story primarily about sexual assault. That’s definitely a bold choice for a story that’s not as progressive as it thinks it is and has historically been full of slut-shaming. But it’s worth noting that one thing House of Night has been great about not doing is victim blaming.

So now we’ve got a story where the enemy is sexual assault, personified. One advantage of genres like fantasy is that it can make the abstract more tangible. In that light, a magically brainwashed victim downplaying her assault makes a lot of sense in this narrative.

Another recent story that did something like this is Netflix’s Jessica Jones, where the primary antagonist is also a sexual predator who has mind control powers, allowing the show talk about abuse in ways uniquely afforded by the metaphor. The same potential is present here. Victims of sexual assault often stay silent, and I’d argue that this story’s supernatural explanation for why serves as a powerful, frightening metaphor for a complicated, real world thing. If House of Night wants to be a story about the ever-present danger of sexual assault (and it’s not like such a story doesn’t remain pertinent), an approachable metaphor such as mind-control magic isn’t a bad way to do that.

Of course, it’s very early. And House of Night could take this in a weird, gross, not-productive direction. But at the moment, there’s power in metaphor. It helps us see things from different angles and talk about them in potentially more accessible ways. I’m cautiously hopeful about what House of Night can do with a story about this.

ANYWAY. Wow, that was a lot of time without any jokes and I have quite a bit of this chapter left. Thankfully for both of those problems, what’s left is even more of the characters just summarizing the plot for each other!

Zoey explains that Neferet is growing more powerful and more evil. But this is House of “Why have six words of explanation when you can have six pages?” Night, so it comes out as…

“She’s changing, too.”
“Changing? What do you mean by that?” Damien asked.
“Her power is different than it used to be,” Darius said.

Actual dialogue in this book: “How is she changing?” “She’s different.” Hunted is a fucking masterclass in filler.

In addition to learning that Neferet is changing by being different, we also go over how:

• Neferet is their enemy
• Kalona is their enemy
• As long as the mind control effect is around, most of the other fledglings are their enemies. Yeah, fuck the House of Night. This story ain’t wasting time on all those nerds at the school who actually go to fucking school.
• And the professors. Nerds.
• The raven mockers are everywhere, and apparently all the Sons of Erebus are missing except for the one they saw earlier (who was working with the raven mockers)

And one more, more theoretical thing based on stuff Zoey’s observed: Neferet maybe has the power to “project her influence by moving through [the] shadows”. I still don’t know if this is a metaphor or if they mean actual literal shadows.