A New Dawn

A New Dawn is an interesting sci-fi novel. With any book of this genre, I am usually worried the science will be too complicated. But that was not the case here. Everything was always explained nicely without going too deeply and making it complicated. So even a person with no awareness about space travel science can feel confident while reading this book.

It was quite easy to read. The writing is smooth, albeit quite repetitive. Some sentences are repeated twice using the same wording or just changing one part. I think the book would benefit with more editing, some parts were unneccessary or did not make sense within a continuity line.

The characters felt a little bit one dimensional I was not able to connect to either of them much. They did not feel developed and neither connected to each other much. There was an issue with naming one of the characters - the commander of the spaceship, Nancy Phillips, is in several places referred to as Tammala Brooks. This fact often confused me about who the book is talking about. I assume the character name change was a last minute decision that was not edited in the final book properly. Presenting the story from the point of view of different characters made it more interesting, engaging and opened the possibility to learn about the same situation from a different position and point in time.

The story made up for the lack of editing. I like the concept of a world more than hundred years in the future and the development humanity went through. Even though the general feeling I got was that there hasn't been much of it. The world felt more contemporary than futuristic. I was expecting more technological development, for example, not just ordinary cars and phones. At the same time, it felt strangely comforting to think that some parts will stay the same while other areas develop majorly, such as space travel. The plot was interesting and adventurous, presented in a way that made me feel tense and interested in what will happen next. Towards the end of the book, reader does not find out what is exactly happening and I like that the fear of the unknown is kept throughout the whole book which ended on a cliffhanger, setting a space for the sequel which I am excited to read.

A New Dawn is an easy to read, intriguing scifi novel. The blurb is what caught my attention first, and I immediately wanted to read and know, where the adventure would take its protagonists.
As it is the first in a duology, I was ready for a possible cliffhanger.

I enjoyed it and for the most part. The plot and story telling was interesting. There was definitely a lot of potential and I liked the classic horror-scifi vibes I got from the book. The mysterious happenings and fear of the unknown was definitely palpable while reading.

The world and entities that Varma created was interesting and the suspense hooked me well enough that I needed to know more, I needed answers. The tension and suspense were both very well used and kept me tied to the book.

Sadly, the characters felt quite bland, I didn’t feel like there was any connection between the characters. There was no (not even platonic) chemistry between any of the characters. It felt like they were strangers in space, rather than colleagues or even acquaintances.
The pacing was also a little jarring at times. I had slightly mixed feelings about it. Whenever the plot it seemed to find a good pace, it would again, rush through certain scenes, sometimes it felt a little forced. While certain scenes there were very intricate and full of detail, others it seemed to be a little rushed.

I genuinely enjoyed reading The New Dawn and I definitely want to read the second book. It’s was an interesting and fun read, with the duology holding a lot of promise.

This was a strong start to the New Dawn series, I enjoyed how everything worked with the elements of the book. The characters were everything that I was looking for and enjoyed the use of scifi element. Akira Varma has a great writing style and left me wanting to read more in this series.