Marquitz, Tim: Dawn of War (Blood War I) (2011)

Dawn of War was free on Kindle and it sounded interesting enough for me to try it out. No regrets there. While I hesitated to buy the rest I found Arrin so interesting that I had to get the rest of the trilogy so I could find out what happened to him.

When reading the Blood War trilogy you are going to have to bring your brain. There are a lot of plots and subplots and characters to keep in order. Even though Dawn of War is an uncomplicated novel it is definitely full of threads to keep hold of.

Violence is frequent and descriptive. Dawn of War is no children’s novel nor do I think it would be a good fit for below 15s (just my opinion).

The Blood War trilogy is dark fantasy. There are no easy or happy endings here. Well there are some happy endings but plenty of endings of lives that I wished had lived. If you do not like beloved characters dying then you had better stay away from Blood War.

In Dawn of War we get to meet several races of people:

The O’hra: Ancients (not much info on them yet)
The Sha’ree: The supposed top of the top of the different races of Ahreele but probably dying out.
The Grol: A doglike people with highly aggressive and racist behavior.
The Bloodpack: A wolflike people with aggressive yet controlled behavior.
The Lathahn: Arrin Urrael has been exiled from them for the past 20 years.
The Pathran: A catlike people
The Velen: A pacifist people.
The Yvir: A people dedicated to the protection of the Velen.

All of the races are somewhat war-like with the exception of the Velen. Without the Yvir they would have been extinct. The most warlike seem to be the Grol who want to kill and eat anything not themselves and when it suits them even kill and eat their own. So not people you want to mess with. But up until the beginning of Dawn of War the Grol have been too weak to eradicate the rest of the races. Now, somehow, they have gotten hold of magical artifacts, artifacts that make it possible for them to tear down the walls of cities without much damage to themselves.

This is pretty much what the Blood War trilogy is about: the desire of the Grol and their allies to take all of Ahreele and the rest who are not interested in this.

Two major mysteries present themselves. How did the Grol get a hold of their magical weapons and who is directing their movements? Good questions and you know I am not going to answer them because that would just ruin the whole thing.

Arrin Urrael is our reluctant hero. Others come our way in Dawn of War, but he is the HERO: loyal, good fighter, kind, brave, dutiful, self-sacrificing and all of the other terms that might fit for a hero. The funny thing is that Arrin is all of this in spite of being able to see the world and people for what and who they are. Arrin has, after all, kept himself alive for the past 20 years in spite of the odds (with the help of his magic collar).

Marquitz writes in a way that hops from one important character to the other from chapter to chapter. For Dawn of War this approach both works and does not work. Keeping in the flow is incredibly difficult when you switch characters. I know I could never do it.

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