Dawnbringer by Stephanie Fisher

Title: Dawnbringer

Author: Stephanie Fisher

Genre: Fantasy

Series: Tempris # 3

778 pages, Paperback

Publication: June 26, 2025

Source: Kindle Unlimited

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They thought the last time mage was dead. They were wrong.

Taly is back. Finally free of the Queen and out of the loop. But freedom doesn’t mean safety.

Tempris has changed while she was gone—and so has she. With enemies closing in from all sides, Taly must navigate a world that keeps rewriting itself beneath her feet.

Skye got her home. That should’ve been the hard part. But now he’s just a boy in love with a girl everyone wants to kill—and keeping her alive might cost him everything.

The Aion Gate is stirring. The island is under siege. And the enemy is circling ever closer.

The war for Tempris is coming. And it's coming for her.

MY THOUGHTS

Dawnbringer was five years in the making. I didn’t discover the book until two years ago, so I didn’t wait as long as others, but I was looking forward to it nonetheless. I loved the first two books (both were 5 stars) in the series so much that I even did a reread before starting Dawnbringer. To put it simply, this book does not live up to expectations or previous quality but instead was a massive disappointment. It felt like it was written by someone else.

I think most fans of the series had an idea or at least a hope, of where the story was going to go in this third installment. To say the story and characters took an entirely different path would be an understatement. Since the beginning of the first book, Shardless, the importance of the aion gate opening and hopefully seeing our protagonists cross into the human realm felt heavily emphasized, at least to me. Instead, the majority of the book was filled with a vanilla, boring villain named Bill terrorizing and wooing Taly. But that wasn’t even the worst part. The time magic was aggravating. Around 35% into the book, the crux of the novel, or supposed twist became apparent, and I was in disbelief. My immediate thought was...this was the best plot? best case scenario after five years? Really? It marked the beginning of countless stupid choices and endless miscommunication between Taly and Skye.

Speaking of Taly and Skye, they felt completely removed from the characters we met in the first two books. The majority of the story consisted of smut, arguments, and fighting. Of the two, who can out-do and save each other first. Good grief, it was getting on my last nerve. I could barely recognize the characters I once fell in love with. I also don’t recall Taly being this annoying. Her future self, Cori, was equally frustrating. By the end of the book, I went from loving Taly to outright hating her. I honestly don’t know if I’ll continue the series now. With book three, it felt DOA. Skye wasn’t much better. The sexual innuendos were “haha, whatever” at first, but eventually he came across like a teenager literally obsessed with sex for most of the book.

Dawnbringer was horrendously long for absolutely no good reason. As mentioned before, with problematic characterizations, an asinine villain, and a weak plot, the length felt completely uncalled for. Did readers really need multiple pages depicting Skye jacking off? No. Then there were POV from Sarina, Aidan, Ivain, and Aimee, none of which added anything meaningful to the story, again at least for me. And I know for a fact I neither wanted nor cared to be inside Aimee’s head.

It was a struggle to finish Dawnbringer because I genuinely cannot find a single good thing to say about it. I finished it out of spite and held onto hope (see above) that we’d finally see the aion gate open and Atlas become part of the plot but we didn’t get that. Sure, they opened the aion gate but how we got there and where it led, was anticlimactic and dull. And no, it didn't even open into the human realm! This might be the end of the series for me, especially if readers are expected to wait another three to five years for the next installment. After Dawnbringer, I’m not sure the story or characters can be redeemed from here.

We Who Have No Gods by Liz Anderson

Title: We Who Have No Gods

Author: Liz Anderson

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Series: The Acheron Order # 1

423 pages, Hardcover

Publication: January 27, 2026

Source: Libby Library

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Vic Wood knows her priorities: scrape by on her restaurant wages, take care of her younger brother Henry, and forget their mother ever existed. But Vic’s careful life crumbles when Henry reveals that their long-missing mother belonged to the Acheron Order—a secret society of witches tasked with keeping the dead at bay. What’s worse, Henry inherited their mother’s magical abilities while Vic did not, and Henry has been chosen as the Order's newest recruit.

Determined to keep him safe, Vic accompanies Henry to the isolated woods in upstate New York that play host to the sprawling and eerie Avalon Castle. When she joins the academy despite lacking powers of her own, she risks not only the Order’s wrath, but also her brother’s. And then there is Xan, the head Sentinel—imposing, ruthless, and frustrating—in charge of protecting Avalon. He makes no secret that he wants Vic to leave.

As she makes both enemies and allies in this mysterious realm, Vic becomes caught between the dark forces at play, with her mother at the heart of it all. What's stranger is that Vic begins to be affected by the academy—and Xan—in ways she can't quite understand. But with war between witches threatening the fabric of reality, Vic must decide whether to risk her heart and life for a world where power is everything.

MY THOUGHTS

Gosh, this book was beyond awful. If I could give it zero stars, I would. I picked up We Who Have No Gods because the synopsis sounded interesting, and I read it sooner than usual because a special edition was being made. Boy, am I glad I read it first.

First off, this book is an urban fantasy with witches and monsters set in a closed modern world, specifically upstate New York. Based on the cover and synopsis, you’d never guess it was urban fantasy. Urban fantasy is my first love, witches too, but there was absolutely nothing to love about We Who Have No Gods. The only intriguing part, as glean by the synopsis, happened within the first three chapters. After that, it went downhill immediately.

You’d think the main protagonist would be the hidden Witch-Born, Henry, being whisked away to a magical academy. Nope. Instead, the story focuses on his pathetic, loser older sister, who has to tag along. The academy is a secret society created by and for a long line of witches, but then comes Victoria “Vic,” a human who suddenly moves in with her younger brother and joins his classes.

I absolutely loathed Vic. She constantly whines about not being special, and about being a human in a castle full of witches who don’t like her and don’t want her around. Even her brother doesn’t want her there. Normal people, people with self-respect would leave when they know they're not wanted. But she throws tantrums whenever people tell her this (oh, and by the way, she’s twenty-one), mouths off endlessly, and is always trying to prove herself right even when she’s clearly not. Then, lo and behold, she turns out to be a special snowflake with magic, more powerful than everyone else. * Cue giant eye roll. *

When things hit the fan and the academy is attacked, Vic of course causes the most damage. Then the bland male protagonist swoops in, declaring he needs to protect her. While the entire academy is overrun with monsters and people are literally dying, they take a break to have sex. Then literally three seconds after they’re done, Vic says, “But I need to help people!". Just wow.

Xan, the love interest and mentor, is lame and completely unoriginal. I swear I’ve read some version of him in hundreds of other books. They had zero chemistry. The book boast 'simmering chemistry'...where?! The plot was whatever, the characters all sucked, and I didn’t give two shits about Aren and Max, their relationships with Meredith, or why the brotherhood ultimately defected from the order.

Characters truly make or break a book for me, and I hated all of them, especially Vic. Her brother Henry was annoying too. I do not recommend this at all.