‘Dawn over Doomsday’ – Jaspre Bark (Abaddon Books)

I didn’t get a lot of reading done over the Bank Holiday weekend (hence all the competitions!) and I wanted to get some more reviews up quickly so Abaddon Books’ latest instalment in ‘The Afterblight Chronicles’ seemed like a safe bet for a quick read that would be entertaining at the same time. At least that’s what I thought…
America has been crippled by the ravages of ‘The Cull’, a plague that has spared only one tenth of the earth’s population (those of a certain blood type), and there are those who wish to rebuild the shattered country with their own aims in mind. Chief Hiamovi is one such man, he sees the aftermath of the plague as an opportunity for his United Tribal Nations to reclaim America for the Indian tribes. Samuel Colt is another such man but his aims are different The Neo-Clergy once ruled America and Colt wants them back in power again, if a few Native Americans have to die for this to happen then it’s no big deal. Matters are about to come to an explosive head at Little Big Horn but fate may yet have a surprise in the shape of Anna Bontraeger. Anna carries another virus that could either save what remains of humanity, or destroy it…
Previous books in the ‘Afterblight Chronicles’ have all been about the apocalyptic landscape and what people will do to survive in it. This has generally resulted in a lot of running battles, mutants and arch villains prepared to do anything to gain power and I’ve been more than happy with this as it means I get a fast paced read with lots happening to entertain me. ‘Dawn over Doomsday’ has the running battles and evil villains but takes a slightly different approach in that it talks a lot about themes of spirituality and redemption in the post-apocalyptic world. When I say ‘a lot’ that’s precisely what I mean and while it’s an interesting area to look at I got the feeling that all the other cool stuff (the stuff that makes Abaddon Books what they are) suffered as a result. Pretty much every character has their own spiritual journey to make with a lot of agonising and suchlike, some find a form of redemption while others crash and burn (literally in some cases) along the way. The thing is that I just wasn’t interested in pages and pages about why Hiamovi couldn’t hear the coyote anymore or Samuel Colt’s crisis of conscience. I wanted gun fights, tight spots to escape from and crazed biker gangs all of which were in short supply. There was just enough of that to keep me reading but not enough to keep me happy…
What redeemed the book for me (although not enough for me to give it a higher mark) was the character of Greaves, the scientist who rescues Anna at the beginning of the book. The author does a really good job of building up our preconceptions of Greaves only to knock them all down when we least expect it, showing the character in a brand new light and making me want to find out what happens to him next. The end scene, with Greaves, is particularly powerful in it’s depiction of the fine line between sanity and madness and I’m still not sure which way Greaves fell…
The explosive ending was just a little too late for me though, I’d been expecting the literary equivalent of an Arnold Schwarzenegger film (fun, popcorn reading) and got something that wanted me to get involved in a completely different way but just didn’t hook me in the way it should have. If you’re a fan of this series then I’m sure there’ll be something here for you but ‘Dawn over Doomsday’ hasn’t done nearly enough for ‘The Afterblight Chronicles’ to dislodge either ‘Pax Britannia’ or ‘Tomes of the Dead’ as my favourite series for Abaddon…

Five and Three Quarters out of Ten