Review: Black Dawn

Black Dawn by Mallory McCartney
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In all honesty, Black Dawn is more of a three-point-five rating. I have such internal battels when it comes to rounding up or down, and in the end I opted to round down with this one. I’m sure many will consider it a four star rating, but for me it wasn’t quite strong enough for me to round up.

Black Dawn has many of the things you want in the start of a wonderful fantasy series. We have interesting world building; we have interesting characters; we have plots; we have royalty; we have evil; we have questionable motives; we have powers we want to learn more about. All in all, this one offers us a lot of things. If nothing else, it offers us all the things we need to keep entertained.

You see, I was pulled into the story. I was constantly left wanting to know more. I have so many questions I need answering, so many things I wish to learn more about. This one really did get a good hold on me. From the very first chapter, I was curious and left wanting more. Things were unclear and I wasn’t quite sure what was going to be thrown my way. As the story progressed, more and more was added that left me inquisitive about the overall story. I was pulled into the different stories, and certain characters left me wanting more of their lives. It all circles back to how I have so many questions – a wonderful thing in and of itself.

The thing that prevented me from giving a full four stars is that I feel as though the story moved much too fast. Yes, I love a fast-paced read. Everyone loves an action packed book that keeps moving forward. This one certainly delivers on that front. However, for me, I feel as though certain developmental aspects were lacking in favour of the action. I wanted to know more about the world – a world that was thoroughly interesting, but failed to become a completely solid image in my mind – and I wanted to know more about the emotional reactions to events. The events were a lot of fun, yes, but they didn’t quite have the powerful punch I’d been hoping for. Having recently read a lot of deeply emotional reads, I feel as though this one fell a bit short.

Nevertheless, I was intrigued by this one. There are a lot of interesting turns, and I’m excited to see where the story goes from here. There are a lot of possibilities, there are so many things I cannot wait to find out more about, and resolutions to events promise to be a lot of fun.

Overall, this was a fun start to the series.

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