The Dawnhounds by Sascha Stronach

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CW: homophobia, parental death, plague, body horror,

This is a wildly imaginative and fascinating book. Yat, a former thief turned police officer has recently been demoted after being seen at a gay bar. Her father’s death has left her devastated, both emotionally and financially. She’s struggling with the disappearance of her first love and is barely holding it together at work. When she discovers a dead body, two fellow police officers brutally murder her and throw her lifeless body into the harbor.

But she wakes up. Now, with a mysterious new power, she has to join forces with unlikely allies to stop a new plague from devastating her city and prevent a war.

The blending of fantasy and mystery was very interesting: our main character Yat is a police officer who lives in a giant mushroom and has to deal with dirty cops and politics. In Yat’s world, there are some really creepy religious groups that have a huge sway over local politics and are extremely homophobic. Sound familiar? When Yat was seen at a gay bar by an undercover officer, she was demoted to the night shift. And that’s not the only thing outlawed by the government. Steel is seen as political, as are books. Corruption amongst the police is widespread and Yat gets swept up with an officer who seems to be blatantly taking bribes and ignoring citizen infractions while they are out investigating the stabbing of an informant.

It’s through this investigation that we get to see more of Yat’s world. Bioengineering is huge. There are houses made of large fungus. Yat’s home seems to feed off of her-like her dead skin cells or something (science, science, science)-and grows around her at one point. There are guns that shoot grubs that kill you with neurotoxins and bore holes in to your body. People have also altered their bodies with various bone growths, limb alterations, and eyeball enhancements. Plants and fungus seem to be incredibly important in everyday life but this is where I got lost because science, science, science and that’s completely on me-not the author. There is also some really cool magic elements that may be spoilers so I won’t go into depth on those.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. It’s one of those delightfully weird and imaginative books that you can escape into for hours. It’s also full of complex and interesting characters, the majority of which are queer. This is also the first book in a series and I’m very excited to see what comes next.

If you’d like to add this wonderful novel to your shelf, you can find ordering information here, or click on the book cover.

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