An impact wave isn’t that original, but Renshaw knows how to create a visceral image of what’s happening. Do you want some scritches and scratches, Flufficans? Who’s a good boy? Yes, you’re a good boy! The atmosphere is supposed to be tense, and now I have images of cute animals scratching themselves. Definitely cliché.Īnd what’s with “to hestitate in their scratchings”? It’s the only creative part of that paragraph, but not in a good way. This is in a forest, and the birds have stopped singing. It was like a swelling of the air, a flexing of the ground, as if some enormous power had been hurled into the earth hundreds of miles away sending tremors throughout the land. It came from the east, from the mountain wilderness of DinEilan. The woods grew still as everything was pressed under a deep, vast silence. But I like his personification of the wind, since it is active phrasing and invokes curiosity.Ī hush of anticipation swept through the trees, causing forest creatures to hesitate in their scratchings and birds to falter in their songs. Its biggest problem is that it’s too linked to the “creepy outdoor silence” cliché – the one Sword of Shannara opened with in 1977. Now that I have expressed my grievances with the chapter heading, let’s move on to the piece.

This was clearly composed by someone who thought they knew design. I guess our first lesson should be “Hire professionals to help you publish your work.” Design is frequently underestimated, but trust me, it is a real profession with valuable skills that you do not have unless you’ve trained in it. And what is the thing in the lower left? A book with a tree on it? A gravestone with a mushroom cloud on it? If anyone knows, please tell me. Only by peaking ahead did I learn that the – stubby, dying tree? – is supposed to be a 1. The chapter number is supposed to be included in there somewhere, but which part is the number? My initial reaction is that it says “chapter two” because of the two arrows at the end, but that can’t be, as this is at the beginning of the book. Who let this terrifying visage go to print? Not a traditional publisher, I’m guessing. * The early chapters are available to read with Amazon’s Look Inside feature, so you can follow along there if you like. In addition, this book has 3,700+ reviews and only a D rating on Fakespot. It doesn’t help that these words border on cliché. “Dawn of Wonder” is already dramatic sounding, and adding “The Wakening” pushes it into melodrama. As soon as I spotted the cover for Jonathan Renshaw’s Dawn of Wonder, The Wakening, I knew this was the book to critique.

Dawn of Wonder by Jonathan Renshaw