James Nicoll Reviews

2019’s The Dawnhounds is the first volume of Sascha Stronach’s Endsong secondary universe fantasy series.

Jyn Yat-Lorn — Yat for short — was once a street urchin in the port city of Hainak. Grown up, she has joined the Hainak police, hoping to reform the unjust system that had oppressed her. Success is elusive. She has been rebuked and demoted after her superiors discovered that her sexual orientation was of a sort not officially approved. It gets worse. While on on patrol, she is shot right between the eyes.

Yat’s story is not over.

But first! Local history.

Until recently, Hainak was an unwilling part of the Ladowain Empire. A biotech revolution enabled a political revolution. Having thrown off the hated empire, the city installed an ad hoc government. An improvement… of sorts. The new ruling council is still full of supporters of the Great Crane cult, a conservative faction determined to make life difficult for people like Yat.

Also, Ladowain doesn’t give up easily. Everyone expects the empire to attack. When and how is a mystery. Vigilance is necessary. Unfortunately for Yat, vigilance cost her her life…temporarily.

To her immense surprise, Yat discovers that for her, death is only a temporary inconvenience… at least in the short run. Rising from the dead, she must consider her options.

Convinced that she has as much to fear from her corrupt fellow officers (any one of whom could be working for the empire) as she does from the empire’s agents, Yat flees. She finds refuge with Sibbi Tiryaźan. Not only are Sibbi and her crew notorious privateers, they have the same not-dying knack as Yat. They can guide her in using her new abilities.

Just as Yat feared, conspirators strike. A horrific new weapon is unleashed on panicky Hainak. If Yat and her friends do not intervene, the city faces a return to tyranny. Too bad that Yat is not known for her success in dealing with skullduggery and surprise attacks.

~oOo~

There seem to be two versions of this novel: the Wellington-based Little Hook Press 2019 edition that I own, and the 2022 Saga Press edition that booksellers now offer. The second edition is longer by 30,000 words. Not having read the second edition, I cannot comment on what was added.

Dawnhounds is also described online as a self-published book1. If true, that would explain some of the issues I encountered while reading. Plot holes, in particular. There were more than a few times where I stopped and reread the last few pages trying to figure out what had happened, and why… in vain. Another editorial pass would have helped. Perhaps the first release hadn’t been professionally edited, which would explain some of the issues. And perhaps these were fixed in the second edition.

Problems aside, there were some good points in the book. The setting was vividly imagined, the unusual technologies in particular. The plot may have been discontinuous, but it was certainly fast-paced. I liked Yat and cared about her emotional traumas². There was a satisfying twist: the malevolent plot facing Hainak is not at all the plot with which Yat thinks she is dealing.

New Zealand readers liked the novel enough to vote it the 2020 Best Novel Sir Julius Vogel Award³. Additionally, Stronach won the Best New Talent Sir Julius Vogel Award⁴. Not entirely terrible results for a first novel, especially a self-published debut novel.

The Dawnhounds is available here (Amazon US), here (Amazon Canada), here (Amazon UK), here (Apple Books), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Chapters-Indigo), and here (Words Worth Books).

1: I did a lot of online sleuthing, but I could find no evidence that Little Hook Press had published any other books. My guess: it was the author’s private imprint.

2: Yat has lots of traumas. Lots and lots.

One of the drawbacks of her condition is that each resurrection whittles away a small part of her soul. No issue for the first few dozen resurrections, but over thousands of years (and she could live thousands of years) the process will erode her away.

3: The runner-up for the Best Novel Vogel award was Into the Ashes by Lee Murray, followed by Solar Federation by S. E. Mulholland, The Blacksmith by Barbara Howe, and The Prince of Secrets by A. J. Lancaster, in that order.

The Vogels have made available packets of finalist samples (well, samples of their work, I mean, not samples of the actual finalists). In 2020, the packet was to have given out to members of the infamous ConZealand. At least, it was made available in theory. But despite ConZealand’s best efforts to stash the packet away in an unlit basement room behind a sign reading ​“Beware of tiger,” the packet did, rather belatedly, make its way into members’ appendages. It only took me five years to get around to reading the contents of the packet.

If you ever want to foster conversation, simply ask on social media for complaints about ConZealand. Come for the mispronounced names. Stay for the egregious omissions.

Looking at the ISFDB and Wikipedia entries for the Vogel, I had a panicky moment where I thought I’d found another award that quietly died around 2020. Nope! The Vogel is alive and well.

4: The runner-up for Best New Talent was Denika Mead, followed by Stephen Mulholland, A. J. Lancaster, and Melanie Harding-Shaw, in that order.