Dawn

This is a hard book to rate for me.

I loved the first half. It incrementally builds out a very interesting world filled with neat sci-fi concepts, exploring lots of interesting ideas. Meanwhile, it gives us lots of time to get to know our main character, how she thinks, and the characters around her. The characters, sci-fi concepts, and philosophical musings make this section of the book a fantastic read.

In the second half, once she starts waking other humans up, it became much less interesting to me. The cast of characters grows so quickly that (understandably) few are given much page time to understand them. But either because of the size of the cast, or for other reasons, the other humans all fell flat for me - 1-dimensional and uninteresting. Even our main character gets less interesting, as we have less time with her thoughts, so her actions start to feel less realistic, less relatable. Meanwhile, a bland political plot unfolds with a bland romantic sub-plot. Lacking compelling plot or characters by the end, I was ready for it to be done and left disappointed.