A review by entazis
The Dawnhounds by Sascha Stronach

adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

This was such a weird book and I say that as a compliment. So, first off, the plot seems simple. We follow a young cop working in a dystopian city, who hopes that she can make a difference and help people. She used to be a small-time thief and so now she tries to help other kids that turned to crime out of other prospects. Of course, she's naive to the bleak reality of their society and only when her colleagues kill her, and gets resurrected by apparent gods, does she get to open her eyes to the brutality, opression, and unfairness of their system. She meets new interesting people, outlaws, and learns she now has magical powers and, with that, starts her journey to find her place in the world, how she can actually help people and her city, in which strange happenings are stirring, and what it means to truly be a hero.

What's not simple is the setting and I can't give it any justice with this review because it really is alluringly strange. The worldbuilding is rich and complex, and I loved the strange and different feel of it, but at the base, it's a mix of noir, fantasy and futuristic scifi, with some cool floral magic and alchemy. But the way the story was written could have been a bit more polished. The first half of the book is so dense with information about world, to the point the story was crawling at snail's pace and I had trouble going through all the worldbuidling. The plot felt at the times meandering and even random, but it did got me interested in both the characters and the world, so by half of it to the end, I was following intently. And while I have some suspicions about what is truly going on, given the info we get in this book (a very well known scifi trope), I'm still very interested in seeing if I'm right or if there's more twists coming in the second book, and even if I'm right about the trope, I want to see how it'll play out here and what will the author do with it. I'm totally here for the world and the wonderful cast of characters, and an engaging scifi mystery is a bonus. If you love pirates, queer underdogs fighting the corrupt cops, and absolutely weird worlds, this could be a book for you.