Review: An Original Survival Story with Surprising Twists
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 08 22, 2013
Savage Dawn starts as a family's drama with a tragedy and a psychic child and ends up turning into a apocalyptic thriller in which the world changes greatly.Separated from her husband Ray, Karen takes her daughter Roxy with the nanny Maria and her two children to a wilderness weekend. Having feelings for her doctor David, Karen invites him also to join them in a cave in the mountains that has been stocked with provisions earlier. Unbeknownst to Karen, her estranged husband Ray also is having a camping weekend in the same area with other people.While the not-too-friendly incidents take place between these two groups, a mountain erupts and lava and hot ash cover the surroundings and the cities around. A few other people are added to Karen's group, and the weekend vacation then turns into a years of survival despite dreadful conditions. What these survivors thought as one volcano's eruption, they find out later, was a cataclysmic shift in the earth's plates that shook the entire planet and did away with civilization as we know it.The positives in this novel are the originality of premise, the constant tension and suspense with a fast pace of action, the variety of characters with their own specific traits and specialties, and the well-written descriptions that make the reader feel as if he is there experiencing the same trials as the characters. Some twists and turns in the plot are quite unexpected, and they help to keep the reader on his toes.On the other hand, the characters that stuck together for survival are given precise skills, too precise as if staged, that make the fight for survival possible.Still, with its fluent writing style, this novel provides good entertainment with a few implied lessons.