Reviews

Dawnthief by James Barclay

Only show reviews with written explanations

tharrick's review against another edition

2.0

Bland and generic sword and sorcery. Not entirely sure if I can be bothered with the sequels...

Objectively speaking I would give it 4 stars as it has decent battle scenes and an ok plot.
However personally i didn't enjoy it that much. I'm not sure why as it has all the ingredients to be great, it just didn't stoked my excitement.

woolfardis's review against another edition

Go to review page

2.0

If you're looking for a fast-paced, action-packed swords and sorcery fantasy novel you could do an awful lot worse than this. It has pretty much everything you'd expect from such a book, but still lacks in certain ways.

I found there was far too much dialogue and it tired me. Then the battle scenes and fighting: very quick and fun to read, but similarly tiring in their length. Everything was just a little too lengthy and drawn out.

It has a simplistic plot, but the world is intriguing, despite the characters being a little flat. It's pretty decent for a shot of action if that's what you need, and don't really mind less-than-desirable development in most areas.

hywelp's review

Go to review page

adventurous fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

5.0

wiltseyke's review against another edition

Go to review page

2.0

This book took a while to get into. The story starts out confusing, giving you the beginnings to all the plot lines that eventually do come together. It just starts out hard to follow. The action comes together and the initial plot lines start making sense.

Not necessarily a must-read, but it's a good read if you don't have anything better to read.

noramjenkins's review against another edition

Go to review page

2.0

It's a long read. Ok story. Like the concept.

anxiousarachnid's review against another edition

Go to review page

1.0

This is a debut novel, so perhaps the later books in the series get better, but Barclay engages in my absolute pet peeve: he switches point of view characters at what feels like random in the middle of a paragraph. Are there eight people present in this paragraph? Then you will need to be prepared for each of them to suddenly become the point of view character at some point in the paragraph because otherwise what is the point of them even being present? All this achieves is preventing us from caring about any of the characters because we don't get to know any individual that well, and confuses the reader. If every character feels something different about something and we get to "hear" each of their internal monologues about it within a line or two of each other it just becomes a hot mess where we end up not knowing who thinks what about anything. Perhaps things improve later in the book but I just couldn't get far enough into it to find out.

ailsaod's review

Go to review page

adventurous funny hopeful slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

Genuinely unsure if I had a good time with this one. I read it when I was a teenager, enjoyed it, bought books five and two and then never read them and here I am now rereading book 1 to refresh my memory. This book has at least three infuriating things for each good thing, is the edgiest thing I have ever read and is far from the most original story out there and yet I still had a pretty good time (mostly). I think this is mostly down to the characters as while they have a tendency towards being self-important edgelords Barclay has managed to give just about everyone a couple aspects you can get attached to. I found myself unironically thinking that I loved and hated the same character at different points in a single scene!

Before I go on though - into positives or negatives I feel like I need to say that the female characters get treated atrociously in this book. There are only two of note so you may think I am blowing this out of proportion but I really didn't enjoy reading their perspectives. One of the women is fridged in a semi-graphic rape scene that while only a page long was grim and the other is 'crazy' from

her young sons being murdered. Yay.

. We also have a line that belongs in r/men write women: I was not aware that separating a mother from her children caused an "...ache in her womb [that] intensified with every passing second." Eh? Is this supposed to be metaphorical??

Just to really put the icing on the cake there is a single usage of a homophobic slur (which caught me right off guard as teenaged me hadn't known what it meant) and the character it is applied to almost immediately dies afterward. Seeing as the man was in a heterosexual relationship this is some truly legendary dedication to the burry your gays trope.

I think the best way to describe the plot and setting is good vs evil Dungeons and Dragons novel. We have elves (although no dwarves or orcs which is odd) and spells with names like 'flameorb' and 'warmheal'. The chief antagonists of the book, the Wytch lords are basically sauron if he was six people and are portrayed as the absolute evil but then things get a little muddled with their minions, the Wesmen. It was unclear if they were supposed to be orc stand-ins (i.e. mini absolute evil beings for our heroes to slaughter indiscriminately) or if they were just regular humans that lived on the other side of the mountains that the main characters are excessively racist towards. I don't think Barclay meant this to be ambiguous but it becomes increasingly so as the book progresses and the tactics of the 'good guys' become more brutal and the Wesmen are almost portrayed sympathetically on a couple occasions before returning to being evil. I really wish Barclay had explained the exact dynamics of the villains in the story as it became quite confusing distinguishing between wrethsires, Wytch lords and wesmen. There are also 'acolytes', 'keepers' and 'guardians' although what exactly they are acolytes, keepers and guardians of is never said and the logic governing the magic systems for the villains appears to work on completely different principles from the one used by the protagonists which seems a bit sloppy. The wytch lords originally came from the four colleges so why has no one else in the four colleges ever attained similar powers or power levels? Also the deal with the Shamans was never fully explained and I am very confused - it is said that Wesmen have no magic but Shaman are wesmen (I think??) so is their magic on loan from the wytch lords? It is made clear that the wytch lords gave them their most powerful abilities but what about the rest? Also given that they are called Shamans they presumably have a religious role but this is never explained how it fits into the mass of acolytes, guardians, keepers, etc. that are hanging about. It was very frustrating.

I did like some aspects of the worldbuilding, however. I thought the dimension travel stuff was interesting and I think my favourite part of this book is when Hirad and co go into another dimension. It is spooky and reminded me of in 'the magician's nephew' by C.S. Lewis when they go to a dying world. Even Ilkar explaining dimension magic at l e n g t h because Hirad's last braincell moved out a decade ago couldn't spoil it for me!

Speaking of Hirad, he has to be the most stupid main character I have ever encountered. WHy on earth they put him in charge I will never understand! This book would have been greatly improved if Denser was the main character as he is the one the plot revolves around and he has a more complicated personality than middle-aged rage baby. For some reason my brain refuses to categorise Denser as anything else than a rat man of the sort that goes on to become a 'tumblr sexyman' so every time Barclay mentioned him being attractive or had him and Erienne falling for each other it felt very strange. His personality just screams rat, ok? Also the way Erienne and Denser become a thing was very weird - she takes like 2 days to

process the murder of her family

and then immediately slides into Denser's metaphorical DMs and from then on her previous family might as well not exist. I know this could never have happened in the early 2000s but the tension between Denser and Ilkar was much more interesting (and over the top!). If this had been an enemies-to-grudging allies-to-maybe-lovers with forbidden inter-mage college love I would have had a much better time. Ilkar is from the lawful-good college and Denser is from what I think is supposed to be the 'evil' college but hits more like the edgy college and they do not get on at first (though this is mainly due to Ilkar being holier than thou) but I really liked their friendship that eventually forms.

The final thing I want to address is the way this book handles its character deaths. This is what sucked me in as a teenager as it made the book exciting - characters die unexpectedly at a rate at times comparable to 'attack on titan' and while this is effective in creating tension it also gets a bit ridiculous. How am I supposed to believe that the Raven never lost a member for 10 years but now they are dropping like flies because of silly mistakes. Hirad kept on being saved by his plot armour which was also a bit irritating as I am not very keen on him. The whole crisis around them getting too old for mercenary work seemed contrived because if they'd just recruited some younger members they could pass on their knowledge and also continue to fight longer?

So to summarise... this book isn't the most original but it executes what it set out to do fairly decently on the whole. Trigger warnings for rape and child death.

Content Warnings