Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening Book 1)

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In this case, maybe someone cut down the tree, it appeared to be a dead stump for fifty years, and then one sprouted from the stump and quickly formed a new tree. The characters and their relationships as well as the clear understanding of resource exploitation (in relation to craft and politics) are what sold the book over and over for me. Instead of showing something strange happening, he’s telling us how mysterious it is with embellished metaphorical imagery. They get found pretty quickly the next morning though because some local farmer tells the soldiers where the horses are.

As much as I like Aedan being wrong in this flashback, I think spec fic is overdue for a subversion of this trope.This is definitely a book that should be recommended reading within the epic fantasy genre and I am greatly looking forward to the second instalment.

Predictions: I feel like Renshaw is going to try to redeem Clauman in a later book and this chapter was trying to set Clauman up as redeemable, but, I don’t think he completely succeeds. Clauman tells Aedan that he’s going to provide information to Clauman about soldier’s schedules and whatever other information that might be useful to Clauman. Everyone agrees that mistakes were made and it is not perfect I’m just not sure why we expect it to be.

There is behaviour that is associated with men which is outright damaging – that is what ‘toxic masculinity’ means. The ship Aedan once found underneath the school had a weird thing that looked like it was made to ram other boats, but they decide it must actually be a trap for giant sea monsters. Or maybe it’s just another case of the whole world stopping and watching while an abusive twelve-year-old acts like a jackass. It is just tiring (to reader and author both) to keep track of the fact that farming is hard, resources are scarce, yadda yadda.