Dawn of Vengeance by Ronie Kendig
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really respected Brand of Light when I read it, but I have to confess that it stressed me out. For its slim size, and considering that it was put out by a Christian imprint, I found Kersei and Marco’s story surprisingly dark and heavy. Kendig didn’t shy away from the hard, and her characters experienced quite a lot of trauma, both on page and off. She toed the line in terms of content, from language to violence to sexual content, the balance struck managing to feel simultaneously clean and edgy. It was just unlike any other story I’ve experienced in the Christian realm, which led to some cognitive dissonance. However, it’s a story that I’ve thought about often in the months since I read it, so it was only a matter of time before I had to return to the series. Strangely enough, I experienced that same shock to my system all over again in Dawn of Vengeance. This series is not for the faint of heart or the impatient of mind. Once I reacclimated, I was swept away but the continuation of the story.

At first, I was thrown by the romance in this book. It seemed to be far too much in the fore of the story for my personal taste—especially considering how things ended in the first book. And with everything else going on in the plot, it just seemed to me that too much page time was given to this one element of the story, to the detriment of the rest. However, my opinion on that changed. I was pretty fascinated by, not only how integral these romantic relationships were to the plot, but how Kendig managed to make things grow and change in the hearts of these characters without compromising said characters’ core integrity.

(Things get a little racier than I would have expected from a Christian imprint, but there’s a line that’s never crossed. There’s a lot of sexual build-up, but from there things fade to black. I respect that.)

This is a space opera in more than one sense. First of all, it richly combines the atmospheres of both classic fantasy and harder science fiction. It’s a heady combination when an author can pull it off, and Kendig does so with aplomb. But it’s also insanely, operatically, dramatic. So much so that I took to calling it a space soap opera when discussing it with my husband. But it’s a level of drama that really works for the story being told. There’s a formality to this series—to the writing, the characters, the story itself—that keeps me from fully sinking into the tale whenever I read an installment. But that same formality is what keeps the drama of the series from edging into melodrama. It’s a balance that took me a while to acclimate into, but it’s one that really works.  It actually reminded me of Red Rising in terms of tone and darker content.

Dawn of Vengeance follows it predecessor in its ending; both novels end on a cliffhanger, but with enough hope and resolution to not be maddening. They do, however, definitely compel readers to pick up the next installment. Which means I’ll likely be reading Shadow of Honor sooner rather than later.

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