Before the Dawn

I'm a big fan of RWBY and have been excited to dee more novels since reading After the Fall. This one takes place shortly after After the Fall and it really was a great continuation. The characters, action, story, and dialogue was great, and I can't wait to see where things go from here. I'd definitely recommend it to any RWBY fan.

How advertised, a little dinged up but still good

Team CFVY meets back up with team SNNN after team CFVY's mission across the desert of Vacuo. But there is no time to celebrate quite yet. Citizens of Vacuo are going missing. And as organization known as The Crown seem to have some connection to it. But as team SNNN and CFVY start to investigate, their teams, along with those in Shade Academy are suddenly mixed up into new teams! Though the members of Sun's team aren't too upset by this - seeing as they are still mad at Sun for ditching them to follow Blake to Menagerie. To make matters worse, the people and students of Vacuo aren't exactly fond of outsiders. Especially those from Haven and Beacon. Why should they trust them after what happened in Vale and Mistral? Can team SNNN and CFVY stop the Crown, find the missing citizens, and find their place in their new home at Shade Academy?! Find out in the last half of the story in 'Before the Dawn'. You don't wanna miss this action!

For those who felt CFVY and SSSN were under used in the series, this book very much expands their stories, though Yatsutachi talking takes some getting used to. It was a fun ride and I do look forward to Theodore and Rumple's introduction to the series proper.

It's a good story with interesting characters. Helps flesh out the lesser known members of team SSSN just like the previous did to team CFVY. Also, improved on issues from the previous book, namely the predictability and flashbacks whose timing ran from random to infuriating. Things I missed were the book being more structured like the show where each chapter could be an episode. One problem I had which isn't really the fault of the book as much as the lore surrounding the book is that it's been well established that faunus racism isn't as bad in Vacuo because they respect nothing more than the ability to survive so one of the main conflicts of the book being Vacuans being biased against the transfer students for surviving the fall of Beacon and the attack on Haven really rubbed me the wrong way. Especially, when there's a history of resentment and a disparity between them and Atlas and we've seen Atlesians acting the exact same way. It's not the books fault but it's still a problem all the same and it negatively affected my enjoyment of the book.

The book is great

Huh, what can I say? A book written in the 30’s, supported by an outrageous idea. Man, I loved it when I was 12, and it still holds up. Most valuable, a primer in how to use the language as it was meant to be used, far overshadows our clipped and modernized speech. Oh yeah, and dinosaurs. Well reimagined. To this day I credit this book for teaching me indirectly where the Tyrannosaur Belshazzar got his name. It is faultless. Current tech can now date rock samples based on how “sunburned” they got. So, this book was prophetic as well.

Very well written.

I really enjoyed After the Fall not only because it was a good book and story, but because of how it gave us a deeper look into Team CFVY and the Kingdom of Shade, which is almost entirely overlooked in the show itself. Before the Dawn serves as a great followup to the previous entry and in my opinion was overall a bit more entertaining. I won't speak of the plot obvious to avoid spoiling anything, but if you're a fan of RWBY and liked the first book, you should enjoy this one too. Definitely recommended.

Found all three books very enjoyable. Hope to see the teams in vol 10. Been too long since they last been on the screen

『RWBY After the fall』の続編。 前回、センブランスを持つ市民を誘拐するハントレス・Carmine、ハンター・Bertilakを捕えたチームCFVY。 この事件を裏で指示していたのが『CROWN』と知ったチームメンバー達は、Shadeアカデミーに戻り、訓練の合間に事件を調査をする。 合流したチームSSSNのリーダー・Sunは、調査に協力しようとするが、CFVYのリーダー・Cocoは、チームのプライドからこの申し出を拒否。チームSSSNの他のメンバーも、Sunが単独行動(本編Vol4/5でBlakeの跡を追った事)をしたことで、彼のリーダーとしての能力を疑う。 そんな中、Shadeアカデミーの学長・Theodoreが、チーム再編成の号令をかける。 離れ離れになる両チームのメンバー達。 この再編成は事件と関係するのか？別れてしまったチーム・CFVYとSSSNのメンバーはCROWNの企みを阻止し、 再び元のチームに戻れるのか？ アニメ・RWBYを別の視点で書いたこの小説は、ファン必読でしょう。 時系列的にはVol7の裏で起こっている話です。 Vol6でSunがBlakeに、Shadeアカデミーに行くことを話していますので、Blakeと別れたSunのその後の ストーリーが楽しめます。 前作は、CFVYメンバーの回想シーンでRWBYのメンバーが登場しましたが、今回は名前のみ。 しかし、Vol3で登場したキャラクターが多数登場。チーム再編成時、CFVY/SSSNのメンバーと新チームを結成します。特に私はチーム・NOVAがお気に入り。(どんなメンバーか気になる方は「rwby nova」でgoogleチェック!!) 前作同様、挿絵なしの英文330ページ。 アニメ本編を楽しんだファンがより楽しめる小説なのに、日本語訳がないのが残念。 新作ビデオゲームが企画されているようですので、これを機に日本でもRWBYの媒体がどんどん発売されるといいですね。

Richiesto da mia figlia di 14 anni ne è rimasta entusiasta.

Okay, I’ve decided to redo this review after a few months of thought and talking about this book with fellow RWBY fans. Initially, I gave this book a 3/5 star review, but upon further consideration, I realised this was being far too generous. While the physical book itself is of excellent quality, the same can not be said about the actual contents found within. Both from a writer’s standpoint, a reader’s standpoint and from a RWBY fan’s standpoint. While there are certainly some good things that can be said about the book, namely just the original characters and the plot itself, everything else found within is best described, in the tamest of terms, raw sewerage. The characters that the book bring back from the show are, for the most part, only the character in name. What I mean is, they share the same characters’ names, but behaviour and personality-wise, they are brand new characters. The worse offenders of this are the returning Vacuo team NDGO, whom have been stripped of their bravery, confidence, manners, trust, and replaced with wretched, uncharacteristic sociopaths. Sun is another character that suffered just as greatly, having been stripped of his caring personality and need to help out his friends, instead going so far as to mock his friends for forming a group to help cope with their guilt and grief. CFVY, the main protagonists also suffer this fate, though not as extreme thankfully. Coco, while narcissistic previously, reaches a new level that doesn’t match up with her arc from the previous novel or is realistic for such a short time period between novels. This goes so far as to have her mock team SSSN for rescuing her, because they weren’t her team and have a different dynamic with each other than her team has with itself. Fox and Yatsu, while the previous novel showed them to be geniuses, are made into morons in this novel, which also makes what could’ve been a brilliant plot twist become forced. Velvet, despite being one of the kindest and sweetest characters in the show and previous novel, for a brief period in this novel, starts to act judgemental and shows signs of having a superiority complex with no warning signs she had such traits, then these traits are suddenly dropped without a true resolution. Other characters that suffer similar fates are Scarlet, Sage, Arslan, Bolin, Reese and team BRNZ. Scarlet is written to be this arrogant boy that believes he could be an excellent team leader, going so far as to mock almost every other team leader. All while he had none of his original personality of the show, which isn’t much, but stripped personality is still a stripped personality. Sage goes from a two-three note character of calm but easily angered member of SSSN, to just an angry boy throughout the novel, until he becomes suddenly nice and forgiving and the most loyal to Sun during the team SSSN forgiveness hour, a moment that is not earned by any member of the team. Arslan, while her personality is the same, suffers from no longer being allowed to be the badass she is in the show, having her most badass moment be a video call, in a chapter that tanks the novel’s story in terms of actual quality and highlights some of the worse changes to characters’ personalities. Bolin, despite his changed personality working to benefit him, going from the social but arrogant boy in the show to the concerned boy of the novel, is barely mentioned in the book and is reduced to a moment of looking at his teammate. Reese possibly suffers the most out of the non-NDGO, non-Sun or non-CFVY characters, having any sense of her intelligence, quick thinking, tactical mind or really anything about her besides her childish behaviour from the show being stripped from her, reducing her to nothing more than an indecisive child. BRNZ is a lot of issues. Too many to put down in the limited space Amazon would allow for a review. At least, go into detail for. With BRNZ, we have: -Blatant disregard for fan want, having the least liked member of the team be the only returning member. -Disregard for following through on focusing on minorities (two black characters and one Asian character), instead focusing on a generic Caucasian male. -Disregard for any in universe logic for said survivor, Nolan having next to zero chances of being alive, with him being confirmed to have ran during the Battle of Beacon actually decreasing his chances of surviving to zero chances of surviving, while May, and a little less Brawnz, having their chances be practically guaranteed. -A lazily added on and underdeveloped m|m romance for Nolan -Terribly handled PTSD and Survivor’s Guilt “subplot”, where Nolan is suddenly better and practically “cured” after just two paragraphs at most There are other issues that were brought up after the fact during the event of RTX at Home, that either make these issues worse (Nolan running for BRNZ, and the want for a bully team but not wanting to creat a new team for NDGO) or add nothing to clear up or doesn’t make issues worse (see Sun needing to face consequences for his actions in the show somehow equaling him being a prick towards his friends for being there for each other, despite that being his thing in the show). Then there’s another outside issue where criticism is ignored if it goes against the ideas they wished to use (prime example is the lore master treating fans that called out NDGO’s extreme personality change as if they were idiots, saying they weren’t considering certain factors that would’ve been some of the first factors considered by said fans).