To my pleasant surprise, Renshaw is a Christian and includes strong Christian themes in this book. He has obvious growth and change by the end, all rooted in a Biblical basis.

The theme of Aedan’s fear and hatred is not mentioned often, at least not until the end, but plays a crucial role in the story. Prepare to be quite depressed when reading this book. While it does have its share of what I call “throwaway knights,” the author also includes the deaths of several prominent characters. Renshaw pulls a brave move by having many important, named characters die. (But that is no criticism of the book I did take a couple-week break about halfway through reading.)

The cast of Dawn of Wonder is so large that many a time I had to go back and remember who a certain minor character was. It will take more than mortal help to deal with these. And a cauldron of hate brews inside him, filled with thoughts of revenge against those that have wronged him, poisoning his countenance. Fueled by a broken home and a tragic loss, his natural determined fire is bent on bringing justice to those taken advantage of.īut a crippling fear holds him back from real conflicts, one buried deep inside him that will not easily be overcome. CharactersĪedan is an adventurer at heart with a mind for military tactics and feet for late-night incognito outings. To clarify, at no point did it drag or get boring. If you can’t visualize that, well, it’s over 700 pages.Īnd that’s really the only critique I have of this book around the middle, the story slows far down from its breakneck opening and closing paces and spends much time developing the characters and world. I can confidently guesstimate the word count at over 200,000. In the very heart of these stirrings, Aedan encounters that which defies belief, leaving him speechless with terror – and wonder.ĭawn of Wonder is long. Fearful travellers whisper of an ancient power breathing over Thirna, changing it, waking it.

Something is stirring in the land, something more ominous than the rising threat of hostile nations. The events that follow propel Aedan on a journey that only the foolhardy or desperate would risk, leading him to the gates of the nation’s royal academy – a whole world of secrets in itself.īut this is only the beginning of his discoveries. But for Aedan, a scruffy young adventurer with veins full of fire and a head full of ideas, this officer is not what he seems. When a high-ranking officer gallops into the quiet Mistyvales, he brings a warning that shakes the countryfolk to their roots. There are some rare occasions when the plot of a book is so complex that the author-written blurb summarizes it far better than I ever could.

Dawn of wonder the wakening