The Forging of Dawn

This is a prequel novella to the Nightfall Wars Series. It is also the latest completed out of the free Podium Audio prequels on Audible. You will stop seeing me say this one day, but it is not this day. 

Overall this is a set up for a series about ‘good vs. evil.' It is posed as the battle between light and dark, and in this series, it quite literally means day and night, or darkness. The heroes of old, the ones that predate even this prequel, were the chosen ones, or priests imbued with powers above those of mortal men to face the dark. Although this novella does not show any of that action, I felt myself heavily leaning on the movies ‘Priest' (2011), and ‘Legion' (2010), to fill in the blanks of what that looked like...aka Paul Bettany as an assassin priest with angel powers. 

The novella follows two parents that are ex-church spies turned merchants. As merchants they deal in lanterns, wicks, oils, flint, aka all things light...just like when they worked for the church, but hopefully less dangerous. To me this did a good job of making the characters interesting and real even though the set up is obviously for their son, Alesh, who the series is about. (I have not read it though). 

Unlike the author's other novella I just finished, The Silent Blade, this one totaled over 4 hours of listening, double that of the first one I completed. With that came a bit more lore and world building, some of which did end up feeling kind of like a dump, and there were things that I found repetitive. Still enjoyable though, and I am tempted to continue the series because of how I've been picturing the world. This series is a total of five books, but with the last one releasing mid-2020 I don't know if it's finished yet. 

Personally a 3.5/5* for me. Both prequel novellas are currently free with an audible subscription, and the quality is good!