Book review
Written by Jaspre Bark
Abaddon Books paperback
Release date Out now

Years after the Great Cull, old enmities reappear in the American West...

This really is a case of not judging a book either by its cover or by its opening chapters. The former indicates some form of supernatural sacrifice, and the latter is poorly written, badly characterised, and really off-putting. But get past that and into the meat of the book, and you're quickly drawn into the political machinations that are at its heart.

Yes, there's a lot of unnecessary swearing and the violence is unrelenting, but you come to believe in the world that's drawn with broad strokes around the key players (which is presumably explained more in the other books in the series), as they connive against each other.

Unlike other stories set in a similar post-apocalyptic milieu, such as Stephen King's The Stand and Robert McCammon's Swan Song, Dawn over Doomsday doesn't see a battle between avatars of good and evil, but between two groups of human beings, each willing to do what is necessary to achieve their aims. Caught in the middle is the potential saviour of humanity, who has been hidden among an Amish community, and an oddball assortment of characters who go through various torments along the way.

Bark's forte is describing the journey rather than the resolution of the conflicts, with one character having a convenient religious revelation, and another, potentially the most interesting of all, being killed off virtually ‘off screen’. Paul Simpson

VERDICT: 6/10
A weak start and finish mar what could have been an excellent pulp tale.