Review: Keeper of the Dawn, by Dianna Gunn

 

All Lai has ever wanted is to become a priestess, like her mother and grandmother before her, in service to their beloved goddess. That’s before the unthinkable happens, and Lai fails the trials she has trained for her entire life. She makes the only choice she believes she can: she runs away.
From her isolated desert homeland, Lai rides north to the colder, stranger kingdom of Alanum—a land where magic, and female warriors, are not commonplace.

This is a novella that should have been a novel. Dianna Gunn's Keeper of the Dawn is something that I really think would have benefitted from a longer format. The story feels incomplete: it presents us with the bare bones of what's happening, but not much space is given to the characterization. The protagonist, Lai, goes from point A to point B to point C, and we're told that she's experiencing incredible turmoil, but we don't see it.

And it's really a shame, because the plot is interesting. It's pretty straightforward, but that's not a bad thing: Lai is desperately looking for a place where she belongs. But we don't see the conflict, we don't see an exploration of what she's feeling. Even the world-building is a bit under-developed, with tantalizing tidbitds that I would have loved to see more explored. Questions abound: how and why did Lai's community come to be? Why did they develop such a gruesome way to select their priestesses? What about the neighbor kingdom?

The wlw romance, in the third part, is the saving grace of this novella. While we don't get to see how exactly Lai fell in love with her partner - especially in light of the fact that it's a union that would be strictly forbidden or not talked about in her own community - their love story is explored delicately and with nuance. Lai's asexuality, while not explicitly named in a fantasy world, is exactly that: asexuality, and it doesn't hinder her blossoming romance. It was refreshing to read a sapphic romance with an asexual protagonist who doesn't compromise on her self. It was a lovely exploration that was given enough space inside the narrative.

Keeper of the Dawn isn't an excellent speculative book, but it's a lovely romance with an asexual protagonist.

✨ 3 stars