Scholastic Before the Dawn (RWBY, Book 2)

A well-paced story that RWBY fans will love. If they included a couple colour illustrations of some of the new characters or Grimm introduced, that would have made it even better, but I'm still very happy with this and hope they carry on making more.

Excellent condition, great value for money, I can't wait to read it, recommend seller!

When you already own part 1 you gotta get part 2 and came in great condition too

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 mostThere 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).

Amazing story! Perfect sequel for After the fall! It was really rewarding seeing team SSSN and team CFVY dealing with the aftermath of the fall of Beacon in such an interesting and we'll told story! Really good insight on the life of Vacuo and it's history, too. The characters, as usual, are the stars of the plot and the pay-off is really good!