Light Dawning by Ty Arthur
Review by: Michael Baker
An interesting read. The entire book takes place in one city during a brutal rebellion at the height of its power, with all sorts of bleak and murky grey. It is a brutal oppression from start to finish, but I did struggle a bit. Something about the sentence structure did put me off. That sounds odd, but I found pretty much every sentence being the same length, same monotone. This isn’t in itself a bad thing, but I found myself bogged down quite a bit.
The book doesn’t have a huge amount of dialogue, and I did struggle in figuring out the plot. There are characters from each rebel faction, there is constant oppression and violence throughout the city, it is chaotic and grim. Some of it is without much substance (some characters I believe can be cut completely), but there is a gritty realism in here that has a lot to be respected. The prose however was something I did struggle a bit. There’s a lot of passiveness in the action, with not as much emotion as I would have liked. it’s more of a general documentary overview of the rebellion. Again, this is not a bad thing, but while I enjoyed reading some of it, other parts washed over me because it felt a bit outside. I would have liked to be more into the ruthlessness rather then hovering over the graveyards like a spectre.
It’s hard to maintain a storyline like this, but I think it does it admirably. It could probably do with a bit of polish and TLC, but there is an excellent story in here, and fans of the darker fantasy genre will find this a good read. It’s not my favourite read of this genre, but it is very readable, does not lack in content and action and overall has enough of a hook to keep me interested throughout.