Plot: 5/5
The Dawnhounds follows Yat, an ex-thief turned cop as she tries to turn her life around and help her city, but in return is punished to the night shift for being queer. One awful day she ends up dead, and then comes back alive with strange, magical powers.

The plot has a lot of moving parts to it, but never gets overly complex, or too confusing and it gripped me from the very beginning, that I loved returning to the book every time. There was so much intrigue built in that I was filled with questions and a desire to just find out a bit more, and even though that was the case, it never felt like anything was missing, just a lot of breadcrumbs that I can’t wait to learn more about in future stories.

Characters: 5/5
The characters were absolutely fantastic, I fell in love with just about every one of them. Each felt so fleshed out, even the characters we don’t see for very long, Sascha is able to paint such a deep picture of them all that they feel so natural to the story.

Worldbuilding: 5/5
The worldbuilding was so much fun in this book, it follows a culture that strays away from metal, and instead turns everything organic. And I mean EVERYTHING. The bullets are even living creature, the houses are fungi, and it was so enjoyable to take a look at the different ways on how life was changed when all these things became organic. What happens when your bullets can die? Even beyond that, we have the wonderful magic system introduced after Yat dies and comes back, which seems to slip right in with everything else and feel so natural. The worldbuilding and the characters are the best part of this book, and are some of the best I’ve seen in recent books.

Writing: 4/5
The writing in this book was great, and I never had much difficulty following the story at all. There were times where the pacing picked up a little too much for my tastes, where it seemed like the plot had to move on without taking the chance to breath and clarify for a moment beforehand. But this never came to much of a detriment to the story, and kept the plot points hitting nonstop to keep the reader invested. So this came as more of a personal preference, and perhaps just because I wanted to sit with this story for longer and delve into every little detail of it.

Enjoyability: 5/5
This story was so fantastic, and is definitely in contention for a top read of the year. It was so engrossing with the story and the mysteries, and created some of the most interesting characters and worldbuilding I’ve seen in a book recently. This is a book worth reading if you, well, enjoy reading. I’ll be endlessly raving about it for quite some time.

OVERALL: 5/5 Mushrooms

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