Review of "Hero Dawn: The Shadow of Peace" by Diego Rincon

Score: 95/100 (9.5 out of 10)

Color us impressed!

We were pleasantly surprised by the quality of Hero Dawn: The Shadow of Peace by Diego Rincon!
While we weren't quite fans of the cover or even the plot, this book is actually remarkable in a lot of ways, particularly when it comes to the writing, the characters, and the world-building!

This book seriously reminded us of some of the very best fantasy novels we've read over the years—books like The Angels of Resistance by David V. Mammina and Kindred of the Unseen by Micah Beardsley. Is the plot as compelling as The Angels of Resistance? Well, maybe not. Is the world-building as rich as Kindred of the Unseen? Actually, it's pretty close.

With that said, this book succeeds at one key thing: chemistry.

These characters just have so much chemistry!
You feel like they are real people who actually care about each other and have bond that's beyond the superficial. Oh, and some of them have cool powers and/or skills, which is cool (like a cherry on top).

A lot of that comes down to the hero duo at the heart of this story: Bastius and Tristian. Bastius is the broken, burned-out survivor who is trying very hard to pretend he is just a merchant lord with a drinking problem instead of a failed Sentry who watched everyone else die. Tristian is the sharp, principled, occasionally stubborn strategist who believes in duty and in Bastius far more than Bastius believes in himself. Put them in a room together and you get some of the sharpest, most heartfelt banter in the book. Put them in a collapsing crypt with a demon and you get one of the best climactic two man boss fights we have read in a while.

Bastius and Tristian just CLICK right away, and you can tell there's a lot of history behind their bond. You feel it in the way they talk to each other, the way they argue, and the way they wordlessly fall into formation when trouble hits. You can especially tell in the way they know how to joke and press each other's buttons without pressing too hard.

Tristian knows exactly when to push Bastius and when to back off. Bastius knows exactly how far he can joke or snap before he has to rein himself in. There are little hints of shared battles, shared mentors, and shared disappointments scattered through their conversations, so even when they are just walking or drinking together, it carries the weight of years.

When things get dangerous, that bond really shines. Tristian trusts Bastius with his life even when Bastius does not trust himself. Bastius, no matter how broken he feels, is always watching Tristian’s back and stepping into harm’s way for him without thinking twice. By the time they are facing Caedes together, you believe one hundred percent that these are two men who have bled, failed, learned, and grown side by side for a long time, and that is exactly the sort of bond that makes a fantasy duo stick in your head.

The supporting cast is just as strong. With dense fantasy books that have a lot of characters, it's easy to fall into the NPC trap: characters who are just there for window dressing. Well, that doesn't seem to be the case with this book! The key to that is how all of these characters seem to be real people with real lives. They have their own clothing styles, hairdos, jobs, passions, motives, and things to do that are extraneous to the plot and main characters. And that's a good thing! The world seems really lived in.

We found ourselves randomly enamored with the supporting and minor characters. Princess Olivia, for example, is only in a slice of the story, yet she instantly feels like someone who could headline her own book. She is a princess, a general, and a political bargaining chip all at once, but she never comes across as cold or stuck up. She teases Bastius, brushes off Germain’s overprotective scolding, and has this bittersweet “childhood friends who grew up into different lives” vibe with him that quietly aches beneath the surface. Their balcony conversation about purpose and home is oddly tender for a scene that happens in the middle of a mob infested masquerade.

Little touches like that are everywhere. Olivia could have been a generic visiting royal. Instead, she feels like a real person with history, feelings, and obligations, passing in and out of the story but leaving a surprisingly strong emotional footprint behind. Even her guard, Germain, got to shine. His protectiveness is both humorous and charming.

Then there is the setting. This world feels like it has strata. On the surface you have the nobles and royal court trying to preserve a fragile peace they barely understand. Beneath that you have the Sentries and their half-forgotten war against literal monsters. To the side you have a crime driven city like Herus, full of brothels, nightclubs, mansions, and docks, that is quietly being hunted by something worse than any mob boss. The book keeps moving between those layers, and it usually does so very well.

Herus in particular is a triumph. It feels grimy and glamorous at the same time, a place where you can drink with pirates, dance in a crime lord’s club, then turn a corner and run headlong into a forest demon. The "three families" dynamic gives the city a crime thriller flavor. The masquerade and nocturne sequence, when everything goes off the rails and the Buckwalker starts to move, is one of those set pieces that makes you sit up a little straighter. It is loud, chaotic, and cinematic.

The other big standout for us is the way this book handles horror. Caedes the Buckwalker is not just some big animal in the woods. He is theatrical, mocking, and genuinely unsettling. The underground sanctum is described with enough sensory detail that you can practically smell the blood and dust. Julian Lore’s diary, the chants, the carvings, the broken bodies, all of that gives the demon weight and history. When Bastius and Tristian finally face him, it feels like a payoff to a real mystery, not just a random boss dropped into the story.

On top of that, the magic system, the Prowesses, are handled in a satisfying way. They feel both mythic and personal. Bastius’s Blue Flame is not just a power, it is tied to his identity and his trauma. Its return is emotional, not just flashy. Tristian’s electric ability fits his personality. Even the Light Bearer, Victor, and his tie to shadows and Vambosh the dog, has a cool, symbolic quality to it.

Actually, fun fact: Vambosh is the exact same kind of giant dog as Cassius, the protagonist from Animal Revenge by David Bush—yet another thing this book has in common with great OCA fantasy books over the years.

This might sound weird, but the world and the creatures that live in it are kinda a character too. For example, there are Moth Goblins that are described in such fascinating detail. You can practically feel their wings brushing the air and hear their chittering in the dark. They are not just “some monsters to fight,” they have a look, a movement pattern, a way of attacking, and a specific role in the ecosystem of fear the book is building.

Now, we would be lying if we said everything was perfect. This book can be dense. There are a lot of names, factions, and bits of history to hold in your head. You get Sentries, Salasils, warlocks, old wars in Hadia, lost ships, royal politics, three separate crime families, pirates, forest cults, and a demonic hierarchy that is only partly explained. For readers who love big, chewy worlds with layers of lore, this will feel like a buffet. For readers who prefer something leaner and more streamlined, it might feel like a lot.

The pacing reflects that. The book takes its time laying foundations, especially in the early noble court chapters and the setup in Herus. There are stretches where you can feel the narrative wandering a bit, talking and planning for quite a while before the next major event hits. When the action comes, it is very good. We just wish the road there had been a bit shorter and straighter at times.

At the same time, the author made a very smart decision with this book: making this part of a series and not making it overly long. Yes, it's dense, but you can still get through it and enjoy it in a day or two (or maybe three).

Another way in which we felt the book dropped the ball was that it killed off arguably its coolest character in the first few chapters. Gaius Emile Trasque is killed fairly early on in the Camden Abbey sequence. He fights the king’s assassin in his bedroom and courtyard, takes multiple brutal wounds (knees, shoulders, etc.), stays upright out of sheer will, and gets in some last hits, but he’s ultimately finished off in the yard. His last words are “Find him… for the darkness looms” before the assassin cuts him down.

Get this: Trasque is almost EIGHT FEET TALL and a bad@#$ senior citizen who can stil crush your skull and kick your SH** in! He is essentially like a mix of the Mountain (Ser Gregor Clegane) and Ser Barristan Selmy (the noble and highly capable elderly knight) from Game of Thrones. And Trasque literally lives in an Abby eternally haunted and marked as the place where an infamous massacre took place. How bad@$$ can you get?
Well, he's dead now, so...

For us, it felt like the book introduced a once in a generation legend, someone who could have anchored whole arcs or even his own prequel, only to remove him almost as soon as things get going. It raises the stakes and shows the assassin is no joke, sure, but it also leaves a bit of a hole where a larger than life character could have continued to shine.

That's not to say that Bastius and Tristian aren't cool and awesome in their own right, but Trasque was on a different tier. He was too well built to just kill off like that.

With all these cool characters and world-building, it's pretty easy to lose focus on the plot. Like, the plot gets somewhat muddled and buried by the other highlights of this book.

There is technically a clear spine here: the death of a king, the reemergence of ancient darkness, and a duo of damaged heroes drawn into a hunt for a demon that is preying on a crime ridden city. That is a strong premise. The problem is that it sometimes feels like the book is more interested in hanging out with its cast and exploring side pockets of the world than in driving that central conflict forward in a straight line. The noble court intrigue, the Herus mob drama, the Sentry legacy, the Hadian backstory, the Buckwalker mystery, Julian Lore’s diary, Victor’s curse, forest warriors, pirates, and more all jostle for space. Most of these things are cool. They just do not always cohere into a single, easily trackable line of action.

It also does not help that the emotional throughline is often stronger than the plot throughline. We almost always knew how we felt about the characters in a scene. We did not always remember exactly what they were supposed to be accomplishing in terms of the larger mission at that moment. That is not a fatal flaw, but it does mean this book reads more like a richly layered season of television than a tight, one and done fantasy novel.

Thankfully, the fact that this is the first book in a series takes a lot of the sting out of that. You can tell Rincon is investing early in a cast, a setting, and a mythology that he clearly plans to use for multiple books. In that context, the density and occasional meandering feel less like sloppiness and more like an intentional decision to lay track for future stories. We just hope future installments give the plot a slightly firmer hand on the wheel.

Ok, one last thing: this book is beautifully and eloquently written! The best way we can describe the writing is... it's sophisticated! Whenever Rincon describes something, there's a lot of detail, a lot of layers and richness to it. Rincon could be describing some random corridor in the palace, a crack in the cellar floor, or the rain hitting Bastius’s empty estate, and he still makes it feel alive with smell, texture, and history. The moonlit desert where the Sentries face the Salasil, the reek of sulfur that slithers into Walter’s banquet, the storm-tossed decks of the Hadian expedition, the cold, stone weight of Cromwell at night, all of it feels vivid and almost musical. Moments that could have been quick bits of exposition instead unfold like tiny self-contained stories, which fits a novel so concerned with memory, legacy, and the long shadow that peace casts over people’s hearts.

Overall, though, Hero Dawn: The Shadow of Peace really impressed us. It has the feel of a big, ambitious fantasy saga written by someone who genuinely loves their characters and their world. The dialogue is sharp. The relationships pop. The horror moments hit. The action, when it arrives, is exciting and cinematic. The epilogue hooks you for more.

Check it out on the author's website!