You read enough of any genre, and it tends to get repetitive. Dawnthief was hailed as a step apart – we-ll, a step, sure, but not a huge one. Good enough to hold my interest, although to be honest nothing too startling.

Following a group of mercenaries called ‘The Raven’, Dawnthief’s strengths are a good sense of humour, characters who generally talk like real people rather than fantasy-staple characters, and a refreshing ability to let fights end badly. That said, while most fantasy authors (Mr Eddings!) set up perilous situations only to have their heroes miraculously survive, James Barclay might be accused of setting up situations to conveniently kill off his characters!

The (subtle) differences do soon give way to a more ‘standard’ and well-worn path, as great evil threatens to return to the land, and our heroes must go on a quest to collect artifacts to… blah blah. But it’s done pretty well, for all that. The magic is suitably tempered, the characters are largely human and likeably so, if not too deeply drawn, and the social structure (colleges of magic) reasonable well thought out.

My biggest complaint would be that no one character really stood out for me, and I really didn’t totally get behind any one of them. This is an ensemble piece, and while the chosen few are fine, the secondary (and tertiary) characters seemed to me to be expecting the same level of sympathy, and I really didn’t ‘get’ them.

Still, a nice enough edition to the genre, imo.