Dawn of the Black Sun sucked me in fairly quickly.  It started with the cover which myself and friends and family started calling “The Raiden book” for obvious reasons.  The book has nothing to do with him but it’s just a fun nickname. Anyway, I digress.  I found the main character to be very easy to connect to which, at times, made the book difficult to read.  Not in the sense that it was hard to read the text but in the sense that this book had a tendency to gut punch you hard.  The story is about a young man who loses everything he’s ever known in his life and decides to go on a quest of revenge.  Along the way he meets a strange man who immediately impresses him with his unnatural, inhuman like strength and martial arts prowess.  The wanderer offers to help him with his quest and, reluctantly, takes him on as a pupil.  They make their journey throughout the treacherous land towards the great mountain where the wanderer was trained.  All the while, there is a man in exile.  Facing his own challenges in an unforgiving desert.  Who finds a malicious sword of some kind of evil entity.  They form an alliance of sorts and begin their own journey of survival.  

So my problem with this book, and it’s probably going to be a problem only I had, was that I found myself a bit bored with the exile’s story.  Not that it was terrible by any means and a lot of it is absolutely necessary for the story.  I just found that I wanted to go back to the other story line.  Because I liked it more.  Which took me a bit out of the story.  Now, considering this is obviously book 1 in a series that’s really not that big a deal.  As I’m sure we’ll get a lot more in the upcoming books.  Therefore, I’m still very much looking forward to the next book.  So, if you’re a fan of something that feels like a Mortal Kombat style of fighting in a fantasy world this is the perfect book for you.  

4.2/5