It probably would have helped if I had read the precursor
to DAYBREAK ZERO, but John Barnes does a darn good job of
catching us up without it being overwhelming.
After Daybreak, a mysterious, moon-based entity, has done
its best to destroy all human life on Earth, it continues
to harass the brave remnants, among them, Heather
O'Grainne. This post-apocalyptic story is ambitious in
scope, covering the complex political schema that struggles
along in Daybreak's wake, as the survivors continue to
puzzle out the essence and goals of Daybreak, as well as
the situation on the ground among the lower echelons not
involved in the politics (small towns and Tribals). There
are complex problems everywhere, from whether or not to
attempt to preserve the original concept of American
government, to keeping Daybreak from infiltrating their
human networks, to keeping everyone fed and in clean water
and being able to communicate and travel across huge
expanses of land; almost everything, except the complexity
and frustrations of communication among non-like-minded
people, has been lost.
I thought this story was well-written, the characters rich
and diverse as were the varied settings. I was interested
in most of the storylines but like they say, "You can't
please all the people all the time." There are bound to be
storylines in a multi-perspective
book that don't appeal to everyone. Mr. Barnes is
excellent at high tension within each vignette. I felt
like the tension overall in the general arc of the story
did not tighten up until the very end. I started out
unsure if I would like this story—o ut and out hating the
time stamps on each new section, with location and time of
day as it was too much info and I couldn't keep everything
straight— but by the end, I couldn't turn the pages fast
enough. I'm hereby a converted fan of Mr. Barnes.
What began as a technothriller continues as high adventure
in the newly savage ruins of civilization.
In late 2024, Daybreak, a movement of post-apocalyptic
eco-saboteurs, smashed modern civilization to its knees. In
the losing, hopeless struggle against Daybreak, Heather
O'Grainne played a major role. That story was told in
Directive 51.
Now Heather's story continues in Daybreak Zero. In the
summer of 2025, she leads a tiny organization of scientists,
spies, scouts, entrepreneurs, engineers, dreamers, and
daredevils based in Pueblo, Colorado. Both of the
almost-warring governments of the United States have charged
them with an all but impossible mission: find a way to put
the world back together.
But Daybreak's triumph has flung the world back centuries in
technology, politics, and culture. Pro-Daybreak Tribals
openly celebrate ending the world as we know it. Army
regiments have to fight their way in and out of
Pennsylvania. The Earth's environment is saturated with
plastic-devouring biotes and electronics-corroding
nanoswarm. A leftover Daybreak device drops atom bombs from
the moon on any outpost of the old civilization it can spot.
Confined to her base in Pueblo to give birth to her first
child, Heather recruits and monitors a coterie of tech
wizards, tough guys, and modern-day frontier scouts: a
handful of heroes to patrol a continent. All the news is
bad: Tribals have overrun Indiana and Illinois; the last
working aircraft carrier sits helplessly out in the Indian
Ocean, not daring to come closer to land; the crash of one
of the last working airplanes kills a vital industrialist;
Tribals try to force appeasement on the Provi government
while the Temper government faces a rebellion of religious
fanatics; seventeen states are lost to the Tribals as
California drifts into secession andhereditary monarchy, and
everywhere, Provis and Tempers lurch toward civil war. Her
agents have exceptional courage, initiative, skill,
intelligence, and daring, but can they be enough? For the
sake of everything from her newborn son to her dying nation,
can she forge them into a the weapon that can at last win
the world back from the overwhelming, malevolent force of
Daybreak? Her success or failure may change everything for
the next thousand years, beginning from
Daybreak Zero.
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