The Dawnhounds by Sascha Stronach

TL;DR: A chaotic mess of a botanical fantasy but SO much fun at the same time.
Source: Many thanks to the publisher for my copy!

Plot: A young cop comes back from death and finally sees the corruption and magic fueling her city, and is set to become a warrior in an ages long war between gods.
Characters: There is a wide variety of characters here and everyone stands pretty unique in my mind. I really enjoyed the variety and scope of characters we got.
Setting: This one managed to really convey setting to me as well, the botanical theme to everything really helped as I love plants and mushrooms.
Magic: The magic, while VERY intriguing is the messiest bit to this simply because we don’t get a lot of clear answers. It’s something I hope we see more of in the next books.

Thoughts:

This book was a bit of a mess, but also the best kind of mess? We follow a few different people for varying amounts of time, but primarily we follow Yat who is a young cop who has been placed on the Night shift as a sort of disciplinary act. She was caught at what amounts to a queer bar and is being punished. While out one night with her partner, another PoV character later, she sees something she shouldn’t have seen and things unravel. She meets death and then meets magic and BOOM the story goes.

Yat wakes up in a mess, and we feel it. She’s bound and determined to protect her city though, and so we face the mess with her. There is political strife going on, which it turns out could be linked to an ages long war between gods. She also discovers magic, and we see her grapple with that and the sudden intrusion and disruption of her life. We see her old partner Sen as he tries to navigate the police foce he’s still a part of as the city falls to pieces. More characters come in, a pirate who might be an immortal? Her wife who I also love, but have many questions about.

This reminds me very much of other gritty city focused fantasy books I’ve read. There is a hint of Malazan with the teases of the greater picture, there is some of The Crown of Omens which I read recently, and I ate all of this up. It’s a unique and very fascinating idea, and I’m extremely excited to see where this goes.

4 out of 5 Growing Mushroom Houses