Dawnshard by Brandon Sanderson

(Titan Books, 2022)

Reviewed by John Dodd

I’m not a big Brandon Sanderson fan, so I’m going to apologise in advance if I’ve missed some of the nuance in the book because I haven’t read anything else of his.

Dawnshard is the story of Rysn, a captain who seeks her own way out on the ocean with her crew and companions. She’s different from other captains in that she doesn’t have the use of her legs, and so has to make up for this with the use of her mind and her mental alacrity. I’m making a point of this in the review because this is heavily noted in the beginning of the book, which is at odds with how things continue in this book.

With this in mind, it’s to be noted that Dawnshard is a short novel in length and has the same problem as most novellas in that there really isn’t enough time to get into a long and convoluted plot before you have to wrap it up with a sound conclusion.

Rysn is in search of treasures and mysteries, the lost city of Akinah and the possibilities of all that lies within. She has many people who come with her on the journey, but the book doesn’t go into massive detail on them, mentioning many in brief passing or giving us enough of a character to recognise what they’re going to be needed for later on in the book. What we learn is that there are monsters of the sea, demons perhaps, known as the Sleepless, who no one really understands and who work their plans in the places where no one else can see them.

The Sleepless do not want anyone to find them and set about a steady campaign of trying to divert Rysn from finding them. She’s not to be distracted from her course, and when Rysn finds what she was looking for, battle is joined in a fight of epic proportions that takes place interspersed with a terse negotiation for the future of how all things are.

As a part of how the ongoing saga is unfolding, I can certainly see how it would add to the existing lore of the world, but as a standalone book, it has the problem that several things are not well explained, trusting that the reader has in fact read the books in the order to which they were supposed to have been read. This is, in and of itself, a perfectly fine way of looking at things, but it does mean that anyone who doesn’t have the prior knowledge of what has gone before, what has happened, who is who and what is what, will be left in a number of places wondering just what is happening.

I liked the nature of the characters very much. I liked that we had strong leads, that the villains weren’t just cardboard cut outs, even if I didn’t agree with their motivations at points and the wrap up at the end was done in such a way to tie up several loose ends but leave others with the expectation that they will be explained at a later point. I took a little time after reading the book to check on the stories that came before and after it, and sure enough, there’s a wealth of information and backstory that can be found in other books, but it means that as a standalone story, this doesn’t work as well as it could.

I suspect that if read in the right order (Oathbringer before this, several other books before Oathbringer), this book would have been far more resonant a story, because you’d already have everything you need to appreciate characters that are brushed over because their stories have already been set in motion before this book started. As it is, while I finished the book and enjoyed the story within, I did feel that I was missing more than I got.

If you’re considering reading this, ensure you do the run-up reading (which is significant) so that you can enjoy it to the fullest.

Review from BSFA Review 18 - Download your copy here.