The Dawnhounds

Sascha Stronach

2019 • 352 pages

Ratings12

Average rating3.3

Gideon the Ninth meets Black Sun in this queer, Māori-inspired debut fantasy about a police officer who is murdered, brought back to life with a mysterious new power, and tasked with protecting her city from an insidious evil threatening to destroy it.

The port city of Hainak is alive: its buildings, its fashion, even its weapons. But, after a devastating war and a sweeping biotech revolution, all its inhabitants want is peace, no one more so than Yat Jyn-Hok a reformed-thief-turned-cop who patrols the streets at night.

Yat has recently been demoted on the force due to “lifestyle choices” after being caught at a gay club. She’s barely holding it together, haunted by memories of a lover who vanished and voices that float in and out of her head like radio signals. When she stumbles across a dead body on her patrol, two fellow officers gruesomely murder her and dump her into the harbor. Unfortunately for them, she wakes up.

Resurrected by an ancient power, she finds herself with the new ability to manipulate life force. Quickly falling in with the pirate crew who has found her, she must race against time to stop a plague from being unleashed by the evil that has taken root in Hainak.

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Series

2 primary books

#1 in The Endsong

The Endsong is a 2-book series with 2 released primary works first released in 2019 with contributions by Sascha Stronach.

Popular Reviews

Reviews with the most likes.

Luna

Bought The Dawnhounds the day it was published in Aotearoa New Zealand, immediately hyper fixated on it for the three glorious days I was reading it, finished yesterday, turning right back around and re-reading it immediately because I KNOW there's things I've probably missed in my first read and honestly I'm not ready to set the book down just yet.

Defiantly queer and vibrantly indigenous The Dawnhounds is a genre-defying work of art. As spiritual as it is political Sacha Stronach's first book weaves a striking tale of magic and humanity, of old gods and new, organic technologies. It gives voice to the healing wholeness of being queer and the ways in which the (western, colonial) world around us misinterprets our power and refuses to understand.
I loved every page more than the last until it felt as though my heart might burst out of my chest. I cried at unexpected moments, having seen a mirror of myself, of my community in the pages. I caught echoes of the knowledge that queers are divine, loved despite living in twisted structures operating exactly as they were designed.
Just as Tamsyn Muir has captured queer humour and power in her series Sacha Stronach has captured queer spirit and fortitude in The Dawnhounds. Together the two herald a golden age in queer storytelling and showcase what is easily some of the best speculative fiction being published today. What a beautiful, curious wonder that they both hail from Aotearoa New Zealand.
Here's to being taniwha instead of heroes.

June 20, 2022