Book Review: Dawn of Wonder by Jonathan Renshaw

Decent fantasy. Classical, medium-high, single POV. Would not call it epic fantasy, by that measure. There was a certain quality to the writing here, not lyrical beauty, but one of wit or astuteness.

At least one impossible coincidence. Several counts of contrived events that demonstrate protagonist smartness by seemingly dumbing down others.

The first quarter was very well done, draws you in with some excellent pacing and build up of tension.

The weakest portion of this work is the middle, the entire time in Castath and the training montages; it seemed to sag and drawl quite a bit. The author has put in effort to get into details of things like weapons training, bow crafting, sword forging, but it felt like too much, too forced. In some ways, it felt more tedious than Simon's underground diversions in Tad William's MST, but it definitely was more varied, so there's that.

Aside: You really feel lost in all of Simon's wandering and stumbling around. It's all under the ground, dark and in labyrinths. And in multiple locations. The least Tad Williams could have done was change up dungeon settings that Simon keeps getting lost in.

Things pick up once again in the last quarter, the change of scene helps. The scenes in Kultûhm were all enjoyable, the abandoned castle was well portrayed. This is a sterotypical fantasy adventure scene, but that does not make it any less enjoyable.

Satisfactory ending that would possibly been better if the middle portion was trimmed.

In some ways, this is standard fantasy fare, coming of age stuff. But, hey, they can't all be intricately woven mind-twisters or stunning lyrical beauty, can they? I actually like this sort of plain old-school fantasy.