Review: The Way to Dawn: Dominion of Eden by Charles Lee

Review: The Way to Dawn: Dominion of Eden by Charles Lee 

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I knew after finishing the second book in Charles Lee’s The Way to Dawn series that things would change. So many massive developments unfolded in the prequel to Dominion of Eden that there was no way in my mind that everything would stay exactly the same. 

And I was right. This third volume deals with the fallout of an event in the second book and how it affects the series up to this point. And (as I’ll get into) there are positive and negative aspects to the direction this volume takes. 

Before we get into all that, though, let’s look at what the story is about!

Summary 

We open to a young woman named Afearia having been raised in Elysium by its elders. When Afearia becomes of age, her guardians decide it is time to send her to Terra as a World Guardian. As Afearia spends more time on Terra, though, she realizes that she has as much to learn about herself as she does the situation on the planet. 

Thoughts 

As I said earlier, this volume deals with a massive fallout from the last book and we see its effects in full view. Unfortunately, I don’t think it worked on all fronts. While there are some really interesting ideas being played with here, the pacing and trajectory of the narrative suffers because we are introduced to a new character to get to know this late in the series. While I like Afearia’s main character arc a lot, I struggled to fully connect with her mission because it felt disorganized and aimless. 

However, there is one idea connected to Afearia that I like a lot. I can’t go too much into it because of spoilers, but I will say it’s related to a sword she carries. The overall concept of this sword and what it can do is incredibly unique and memorable. It also helps connect her journey to the overarching plot thus far, which I really appreciate seeing. 

Anyway, now that I’ve gotten those thoughts out of the way, let’s move on to the structure!

Structure 

Now, the structure was admittedly something I was concerned about because of the events of the series thus far. And honestly, it does suffer because of that. While Afearia does have a clear goal, the direction of her journey is not clearly laid out within the structure. This makes a lot of the events that happen along the way feel random and makes it difficult to see the main point of it all. I started to see that point toward the end, but it felt too late by then. 

I will say that I like that we see Derexen’s actions have consequences. While we see him and his allies working on important things in ways that makes it look like it’s for Terra’s good on the surface, we’re also made very aware of how the world’s citizens see him. Considering certain pieces of information revealed in the previous installment, I’m very interested to see what Derexen’s next move is.

Well, that’s all I have on the structure. Let’s move on to the writing next. 

Writing 

The writing is unfortunately a major reason I struggled to connect to Afearia’s journey. I’m disappointed that the pacing in this installment slowed down as much as it did. Within the context of the overarching story, that is my biggest issue with the narrative. Because Afearia’s journey doesn’t have a clear-cut timeline, her actions came off as random and it slowed things down significantly. And the worst part is, her end goal is crystal-clear. The previous installments had the characters’ actions affect them as the story went on, but with Afearia’s journey there is no basis for that. 

This also affected mood and tone. While we see the main goal clearly, the stakes don’t feel as high because of the pacing issues I mentioned. So, even when things are meant to be tense and put you on the edge of your seat, for me it wasn’t enough to remain fully invested. This means that the mood and tone try to convey one thing, but the pacing doesn’t complement these other elements in a way that kept me hooked. 

Unfortunately, the writing still didn’t flow the way I was hoping for and, combined with the pacing, it didn’t work for me. 

Well, I think I’ve covered everything I needed to. Now that I’ve gone over all this, let’s wrap it up. 

Conclusion 

I’m disappointed this didn’t work as well as I’d hoped it would. The entire narrative hinges on the reader getting used to this new situation within the overall plot and it was just too big of an adjustment for me. While I want to see how this all ends, this volume overall was rather underwhelming. For this reason, I will be giving it two stars.