Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening)

I've just listened to the best audio book ever.

That may be a little bit superfluous, but I don't care, I loved it.

I bought this book because it was on Audible's list of the best books of last year, and they were right.

The book is called Dawn of Wonder, and it is the first book in a series called The Wakening by Jonathan Renshaw.  From what I understand, this is Mr. Renshaw's first published work, and he is off to an amazing start.

As a synopsis with spoilers only for the first few chapters (of a total of sixty six or so), I will say this book is about a 12 year old boy whose best friend is kidnapped and sold to be sacrificed by a strange civilization.  He then chooses to dedicate his life to avenging her death.

The first thing that I noticed about the book, listening to the sample chapter, was the delicious way Renshaw described the natural world and its unnatural disturbances.  Beautiful, detailed descriptions are given to the fantastic "pearlnut trees" as well as to more familiar features of the landscape.

This book is definitely high fantasy in the sense that it takes place in some fictional world, but there are only a few instances of things that could be considered magical.  I would say the book is mostly pretty grounded in rational ideas, but occasionally something that resembles the supernatural does happen.

I would describe the action sequences as being over the top.  In trying to describe violence, puzzles, and traps, I would say it's along the lines of Indiana Jones or Pirates of the Caribbean.  It resembles slapstick, but it is serious, and the actions of the characters do have consequences.

I would say this first book in the series is appropriate for most young adult readers.  I would be remiss in failing to mention that there is a copious amount of child abuse in the book.  There is no lewd content or foul language, but it does deal with some very heavy themes (like slavery), and it also features a copious amount of violence.

Overall, I think the word outstanding fairly describes this ambitious first entry in The Wakening series.  I await the second installment with much anticipation.  I don't have any theories about where it's going to go from here, which is a rare thing for me.

Finally, A Worthwhile DC Title

Here's some background for people who don't know me personally.  I'm a pretty hardcore Marvel comics fan.  I don't do DC.  I use too, before the New 52 was a thing.  I was a pretty regular reader of Gotham City Sirens.  I loved that cast.  Catwoman, Harley, and Ivy.  All of them awesome, well developed female characters with flaws and interests.
And then the New 52 happened.  It completely reset that world I liked so much.  It infuriated me with new, more skimpy costumes for women.  Catwoman's actions didn't make any sense anymore, she just became this thrill seeking character with ridiculous scenes of Catwoman and Batman having rooftop liaisons and pouring diamonds over her breasts.  It just completely lost me.  I didn't want to read that even a little bit.  The friendships that won me over to GCS were gone overnight.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the characters I liked were saintly in the first place.  Harley allows herself to be continuously abused.  Ivy drugs people with her plants.  Catwoman steals from rich people.  All three of them are criminally insane.  But they're awesome female villains, or they were before the New 52.
 I swore off DC.  After Harleygate,  I was so deeply disillusioned with DC comics as a company, I was pretty sure they were never getting my money again.
 Enter Injustice: Gods Among Us.  It's just a video game novelization, right?  I mean, it's not even canon.  It's a little pocket universe created for the purpose of making an interesting video game.  Maybe that's what DC needs to do.  Their characters and plots are so warped and twisted from the way they started, maybe they should just go ahead and throw any notion of canon out the window and just write a series of what if books.  Who would think that's a viable strategy to revitalize a project like this?
The thing Injustice Gods Among Us is most similar to so far, I think, is the Marvel Civil War arc.  Some people hate Civil War, but I love it.  It's high drama.  It tests relationships.  It forces characters to confront some of their issues.  It's fast paced and unafraid of applying preasure to the main characters by killing off major characters and fan favorites.  This series really condenses a lot of action and drama to each issue.
I love the way this series treats characters like Aquaman as and the Flash as the major players they were designed to be instead of demoting them to the back seat their characters frequently take.
I found myself riveted by interactions between characters who have never come across each other before.  Oddly enough, I came out of volume 1 shipping the Green Arrow with Harley Quinn.  OTP.
DC is still doing an awful job at the character design level when it comes to female costumes.  In this particular book, however, the actions of all my favorite characters are in line with who those characters are.
One of my favorite scenes, one that I think was very daring, was an accusation by Superman that Batman loved the Joker, that he kept him alive because he enjoyed their games.  The writing in that scene was so spot on, so true to the anger those characters felt towards one another.
I ate it up, and now I want to read some more.