Customer Reviews

Black Dawn

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Now and then I pick up a book solely based the the cover. I had never heard of the author but upon reading the blurb it sounded like something similar to McCammon's Swan Song, one of my favorite novels of all time. The story is initially very ambitious, introducing many characters and plot lines. But it seems that just when you are really getting into the characters, it suddenly hits you that there are only a hundred or so pages left in the book. It's like when you are watching a show on television and you suddenly realize that there are only five minutes left and they still haven't got Timmy out of the well... Needless to say, the ending feels rushed and is very unsatisfying. Better "end of the world" novels would include Niven and Pournelle's "Lucifer's Hammer", King's "The Stand", and McCammon's "Swan Song".

Inconsistences abound. Editing errors throughout. Effort spent on building characters and then killing them off for no apparent reason, surely not to progress the plot. Story lines that were totally wasted.

I figured listing the problems with the book like this would get the point across a lot more succinctly. THIS IS A BAD BOOK.

I struggled through this book, but I kept going because I just thought it would get better. I came to the review site, hoping to find a clue about what was going on. Who won this epic battle? What inconsistencies! The herald is a good guy, but doesn't know it? Come on....how much guidance did he need. There were too many unnecessary characters, too much unneccessary detail, and too many unanswers questions. It seems the ending was just thrown together when the author reached his page limit. I had never heard of D.A. Stern either, but both the front and back covers did indicate promise. I still hesitated before buying the book, and now I wish I had followed my first instinct. Follow the other viewers advice....re-read the Stand!

Page 1 gets you excited! It sounds as if it's going to be one heck of a book. Character building is well done.....and overdone. Basically, the characters are built and the good guys die one by one...and it leaves you wondering, why? If this is a book about good vs. evil, I don't think the good guys won and I'm not really sure who the bad guy was! All in all, I was left very confused at the end of the book and wondering why this book that showed such promise fell flat on its face.

Fear the day. . .

Fear the night. . .

Fear the instant you purchase this horrible book. . .

As an inundation of overpowering curiosity welled within, a voice obstinately demanded that I get my grubby paws on the very latest from D.A. Stern. Who exactly is D.A. Stern? It didn't matter at the time, all I sought was his newest paperback. And all for what? An eye-catching cover glistening as if it were a hologram? The next pages displaying two arresting artworks of Satan as women rejoice around his flaming maw? Is that why my robust senses deceived me, trapping me deep in an impetuous buy? Yup. Literature teachers unremittingly inform their pupils to never judge a book by its cover. An expression articulating how most unsightly books may be a craft of sheer excellence. Black Dawn exploits this ancient proverb in a full opposite effect. Being one of the most visually tempting book becomes an upsetting, galling, and pointless read. Reciting the prologue, a huge attention-grabber, the story seems it would be honored in an outstanding ovation, then fairly quickly, readers gather Stern's unimaginative venture into a scenario where uncared-for characters endure the one dreadful Apocalypse. I don't know what's more dreadful, the done-to-death plot or the entire book itself.

Welcome to contemporary, urban America. The streets are bustling with sadistic gang-bangers, corrupt servants of authority glaze malice on the frail, and oh yeah, an unspeakable resurrection of the Apocalypse grows closer. In preparation of Satan's turbulent return, sudden assailing "waves" pulse all over the U.S. For no particular reason, the invisible surges provoke the ills of humanity, massing two ultimate sides; those affected by the waves against those who are randomly blessed to subjugate it. With every kind of electronically device defunct, blackness invades the land. Pearl Coleman, faithful disciple of the great Serpent (King of the Underworld), quells concord, producing rampant disorder in every direction. Her relatively trouble-free duty is to repossess prehistoric artifacts to conclusively link the portals between Earth and Hell.

To put it bluntly, Black Dawn hardly promotes scale to the "end of the world" plight. It's been overwhelmingly rehashed and the addition of the waves as reasons why the populace lose their crackers is ridiculous and languid on the author's part. Stern neglects a clear explanation why individuals are not influence by it, instead he handpicks certain characters in intertwining stories then explains how they deal with the collective hysteria. The book is drenched with blurred intent of the Serpent other than to ravage humanity because he is "evil". Missing are the answers on how the waves' function and where they have derived from. Fundamental characters, if any, are driven out the book by abrupt, stupid fatalities. Stern's imagination is flimsily shaped as the story revolves in too many angles, too many locations, and too many central characters. Black Dawn has mediocre movie written all over it. If there is a tremendous battle between good and evil, it was nowhere to be found. But, if you consider excessive, ungainly murders where every individual is nothing more than expendable, then this book is for you. Otherwise scream in dread or give a menacing scowl should you ever come across this garbage.

I'll start off by saying, like many others, that this book has what can be described, at best, as an ambiguous ending; an ending that kept me from giving it a full five stars. A quick and painless wrap-up to a story that seemed to be building to so much more. But if you read books for their content, rather than their resolution, I cannot overstate the captivating nature of this book.

To be fair, I read the majority of this book while on an excessively long road trip through an incredibly dismal storm and nearly unpopulated parts of Central Florida. The backdrop made for an incredibly engrossing experience, though, as by the time I looked up from the book to see where we were, I half expected a desolate, post-apocalyptic world to be staring back at me. To get the full effect, I strongly suggest reading this book in less-than-perfect light, on an overcast and stormy day if possible. It has the potential to draw you in so deeply that you can truly visualize yourself in its world, something that is increasingly rare in books these days.

While many have criticized the writer's tendancy to kill off main characters with chapters worth of backstory in less than memorable scenes, to me this only helped to accentuate the brutality and impending doom inherent to the plot. It makes for a startlingly fresh approach to the concept that death is inevitable, everyone that dies has lived a long and storied life, and not everyone gets to die in an epic struggle. Sometimes you spend months on a journey only to get unexpectedly beheaded by a tiger that you never saw coming.

Comparing this book to The Stand is like comparing 28 Days Later to Night of the Living Dead. Yes, they're both "End of the World" novels. Yes, they both focus on the final conflict in the war between Good and Evil. The similarities end right about there, though. Books with these same themes have existed for thousands of years, Stephen King just happens to be the most recent great writer in the genre. This is no more a ripoff of The Stand as it is of Revelations. Get over it.

I would like to say that I have recommended (and in some cases, loaned out) this book to multiple friends, and anyone with an enthusiasm for reading, and have never heard a negative comment about it except "What was up with the ending?" I will continue to suggest this book to anyone and everyone, because it truly is a great reading experience. It just has a tendancy to leave a bad taste in your mouth at the end.

It picks up a bit as it goes, mostly by killing its major characters off in an ever faster pace as the ending approaches, but the ending that does come is vague and more than a bit confusing.

Also, the Anti-Christ figure should be dark and menacing, not come off like a spoiled child with nothing better to do. Only the characteres of Thomas and Abby are mildly interesting.

Major plothole: At one point, Abby tries to save the day but instead makes things worse. Recognizing this, she does another fix that "makes things better." However, if you do the math carefully, you'll see she didn't.

Read THE STAND or SWAN SONG. Take this to the used bookstore.

I got this in a used bookstore and was suprised by it. It is your average end of the world story except in this book the action never lets up. I actually give it 3.5 only because I thought the author ended it rather quickly and I was dissapointed in that because he really had some great characters in the book that I wanted to read more about and find out more as to the reasons of Armegeddon starting but these things still did not diminsh my enjoyment of this book.

If you like fast paced, end of the world, fantasy-horror books then I recommend this one.

I know that sounds bad but it is true this is the first book I ever hated. The plot was thin and poorley drawn together. I had never read an awful book till this one. It's as though he wanted to write some sweeping apocolyptic epic (The Stand for instance like other users have said) but was just to lazy to rope it all together or go into any sort of detail.

First thing first: This book is NOT a rip-off of The Stand. Why is it that whenever someone writes an epic, end-of the world horror novel everyone claims it to be ripping off the King book? Just like Robert McCammon's "Swan Song", "Black Dawn" has a similar premise to The Stand but the author then takes things into a completely different direction.

True, this is not a great book. Good, but not great. The author creates way too many characters for a book of this size(400 pages only). Worse, some of the characters he creates that you would think are essential to the story's development get killed off swiftly and quickly just when you start to get to like them.

It's true that writing an end-of-the-world book on an epic scale and with a dozen characters in only 400 pages seems like a daunting task. However, Simon Clark did it quite well with "Blood Crazy" as did Yvonne Navarro with "Final Impact". D.A. Stern doesn't do so well, however. But let's not call this a Stand ripoff when it is not. If we keep doing this, writers will shy away from writing this type of horror novel, which would be a shame.