I’m thrilled to be kicking off the blog tour for A Chain Across the Dawn today. Thanks so Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part.

About the Book

It’s been three years since Esa left her backwater planet to join the ranks of the Justified. Together, she and fellow agent Jane Kamali have been traveling across the known universe, searching for children who share Esa’s supernatural gifts.

On a visit to a particularly remote planet, they learn that they’re not the only ones searching for gifted children. They find themselves on the tail of a mysterious being with impossible powers who will stop at nothing to get his hands on the very children that Esa and Jane are trying to save.

With their latest recruit in tow—a young Wulf boy named Sho—Esa and Jane must track their strange foe across the galaxy in search of answers. But the more they learn, the clearer it becomes—their enemy may be harder to defeat than they ever could have imagined.

My Review

I didn’t realise that this was the second book in a series when I started reading it, but this didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the book. This can be read as a standalone, however I am going to get the first in the series.

I really enjoyed this book. I love sci-fi and space operas, but I find they can often be quite hit and miss. A Chain Across the Dawn kept my interest wonderfully for the entire book.

I thought that this book excelled at things that sci-fi can really struggle with. It doesn’t get too bogged down in world building, and giving the entire history of different planets and races, but it does give enough detail that the reader understands what’s going on, and doesn’t feel like they’re missing out on part of the story.

I also thought the pacing of this book worked really well. I couldn’t put the book down as I had to know what was going on. The pacing kept the story moving really well, while still allowing time to discover more about the character’s back stories, and giving the reader time to process what was going on.

The characters in this book are really well written and easy to connect to. They’re all incredibly human, despite the fact that they’re aliens. The motivations of the characters, and the reasoning behind the ongoing wars, are easy to relate to, and similar to what we see around us today. I liked the idea of religion as something that doesn’t end, and instead expands as technology does and we start to explore different planets, and species. The use of religion as a justification for war is a common one, but despite this religion isn’t portrayed negatively in the book.

I absolutely adored Esa. She was a wonderful character, and one the reader could relate to easily. I also love seeing bad-ass females who are still in touch with other aspects of themselves. So often the strong female character is an excellent fighter, but don’t have any other personality. We saw that Esa was fighting for the right reasons, but was still affected by what she did.

I loved this book. I’ve already ordered the first in the series, and I’ll be looking out for more from this author.

Another huge thanks to Anne for inviting me onto this blog tour. All opinions are my own.

About the Author

Drew Williams was born and raised in Birmingham,
Alabama, in the southern United States of
America. He is a bookseller at the Little Professor
Book Center in Homewood, Alabama. A Chain
Across the Dawn is his second book.