Set in the fictional city of Hainak, Dawnhounds places readers in a world variously annexed and simmering with unrest, overseen by a dystopian and allegedly provisional government.Īll things resembling New Zealand’s own history at one time or another-but also universally recognisable anywhere power-hungry men are titled and armed. What I was maybe expecting was some ham-fisted daguerreotype of historical atrocity thinly disguised as ‘otherworldly.’ But what I got, and which I’m nearly ecstatic and relieved to say, was something else entirely. The title bears more than a passing resemblance to a chapter in our Pacifica-history only recently publicly apologised for (meaning the Dawn Raids, and to what end who knows), and it was perhaps coupled with this incongruity that I went in veritably on egg shells. Quickly falling in with the pirate crew who has found her, she must race against time to stop a plague from being unleashed by the evil that has taken root in Hainak.When I got wind of Sascha Stronach’s fantasy debut The Dawnhounds being to some extent Māori-inspired, I took pause. Resurrected by an ancient power, she finds herself with the new ability to manipulate life force.

When she stumbles across a dead body on her patrol, two fellow officers gruesomely murder her and dump her into the harbor. She’s barely holding it together, haunted by memories of a lover who vanished and voices that float in and out of her head like radio signals. Yat has recently been demoted on the force due to “lifestyle choices” after being caught at a gay club. But, after a devastating war and a sweeping biotech revolution, all its inhabitants want is peace, no one more so than Yat Jyn-Hok a reformed-thief-turned-cop who patrols the streets at night. The port city of Hainak is alive: its buildings, its fashion, even its weapons.

Gideon the Ninth meets Black Sun in this queer, Māori-inspired debut fantasy about a police officer who is murdered, brought back to life with a mysterious new power, and tasked with protecting her city from an insidious evil threatening to destroy it.

The Dawnhounds by Sascha Stronach