Dawn of Wonder

DNF at 50%
Overly long and childlish

Very staple Fantasy diet I guess. Could have done with better supporting cast development and a broader picture of what the protagonist is facing. A long plodding tale of a boy growing up which never really reaches its expectations. Luckily it never really got taxing so I ended up finishing the 700 odd pages. No book 2 for me it seems

Executive Summary: Started and ended really strong with a few lulls in the middles that cost it from possibly being a 5 star read for me.

Audiobook: I'm a huge fan of Tim Gerard Reynolds. He does a fantastic job with every book I've ever listened to him narrate, and this one is no different. He does a variety of voices and always is easy to understand and hear.

Full Review
I got this one as a gift a few years ago, but it was pretty long and the second book doesn't seem to be coming out soon so I was in no rush to pick it up. I found myself at a point where I was trying to pick out an audiobook of the about 30 hours waiting for a new release on April 5th and this fit that bill nicely. I'm glad I finally picked this one up.

I'm a sucker for the fantasy school trope. This isn't quite that. In fact there is very little magic to speak of in the book for the most part. Instead what we get is more like Ranger school.

Aedan at times seems like your stereotypical chosen one, but it turns out there is a lot more going on than meets the eye initially. I thought the supporting cast was really good. You have your typical school bullies and enemy turned ally tropes, but I seem to just eat that up. I liked his lab partner in medical class the best, although I don't recall her name because I'm terrible at names.

As someone who loves puzzles and tends to favor rogues and rangers when roleplaying, I loved the idea of the school with it's training of both the mind and the body taught in a school that seems full of mysteries.

There is enough different going on here that kept me listening to an extra chapter here and there throughout most of the book. I did find a few lulls at points in the middle however.

Overall I really enjoyed this book and will definitely pick up the second book on release day. Based on his website maybe that will be by the end of the year or early next year. I sure hope it's this year!

I give this book a solid 3.5 / 5.

Renshaw manages to tell a classic coming of age story in a way that makes it feel fresh and new. There's a quest for revenge against slavers, training in an elite military academy, nations on the brink of war, and a mysterious ruined city that few have ever visited and lived to tell the tale.

The Good: Aedan, the main character, doesn't start out as an expert or mastermind in pretty much anything. He has a head for tactics, but has plenty of flaws to round out his character. The prose keeps you glued to the page. There are some informative parts, too, like the basics of how to make a bow from scratch or the merits of different weapons. Once the book starts to hint at the titular “wakening” aspects of the world, you get to see some really, really cool ideas take shape.

The Bad: I strongly dislike rushed stories, though some readers may find this book drags in the middle. You get many pages of scenes that feel like they have no further purpose than showing us how Aedan learns a particular skill, like how to swing a sword or how to talk to girls. Also, the character development for Aedan is a little inconsistent. When the story requires it, he is a brilliant tactician, but when it doesn't, he often can't see very simple solutions to his problems. The side characters are quirky and fun but not very deep.

Overall, this book was very enjoyable and a strong debut.

The author knows how to use modern writing techniques to engage the reader. Accessible language, lots of dialog involving the main character, giving voice to his inner thoughts, just enough info on the supporting characters.

He takes his time to describe the scenes, and the exposition is slow, but the quality of his narrative is solid. Too bad the book lacks s properly paced plot.

The book is not about a great evil to be defeated, exciting adventures, swords and sorcery. No, this book is about the life of a young boy in a low/no magic fantasy world. The first part of the book (~6h) is about his “life until now”, we get to meet his friends, the town he lives in and who he is as a person. Then something bad happens and he moves to the big city, where he seeks training in a marshal's academy (4h+).

And that's all that happens in nearly 10h of reading. I stopped reading when it began clear that there is absolutely nothing I care about learning about the daily life of a student learning how to fight, about laws, different languages, girls, making friends...

I suspect a abridged version, 10-15 times smaller would make an interesting read. This books lacks the brevity and intelligence of Ender's Game and while resembles The Wheel of Time in structure (both are really slow paced), it's overarching plot is much more mundane.

9:40 / 61:52 16%

This book grabbed my attention and kept me interested in the story and the main characters throughout. I actually got the Audible edition so that I could listen while I drove. That's how good it is, I didn't want to put it down! I loved the descriptions of what the students were learning. A book can get bogged down in the minutia of things but the author balances the teaching with the story and it is an enjoyable read. I haven't given a 5 star in a while (I seem to get pickier as I age grin). Highly recommended and I cannot wait until Book 2 comes out!!

This is a book that I'd been looking forward to reading quite a long time. It's been recommended to me on Audible for about a hundred times, and it interested me a lot based on its description. However, I can't help but feel disappointed now that I've finished it.

I find it very hard to put it into words exactly what was missing for me, but I lacked a connection to the story. It slowed down in pace often enough, and there were chapters that I felt were not needed, and I could live with that, but it was hard to really grasp the story at times. We have a main plot, that is heavily touched upon at the start of the book, and only resurfaces for a bit at the end, but in the meantime we also have (magical?) beasts on the loose in a forest and some high-powered people in the city aren't all what they seem, but neither of those two had a real effect on the story or particularly high stakes. The beasts felt random, and the political intrigue felt almost like a story filler until we got to the actual thing, which will likely be most of the next book. Since they're leaving the city, are we even going to see much of it in the next one?

When it comes to characters, there are quite a few. Aedan is our main character, and he's alright, but again I was missing that connection. Osric is the true MVP though, and I liked Lorrimer as well, but that's about it.

The parts of the story I did find interesting though, was the whole beginning in Mistyvales with just a bunch of kids having adventures and having fun, as well as the school parts with the lessons and the exams and the students helping eachother out. That's definitely when I was most into it, but I felt otherwise it spun a bit out of control and wanting to be too many things at once. Which is why it's three stars, because overall I liked it, but I'm just a bit down on it because I felt that it could have been much more (or at least much less, like just if the story was trimmed down, or just with a focus shift).

Overall a good read, but a disappointing middle portion of “hero goes to school” that didn't live up to the rest of the book.