One approaches a book like The Dreadful Dawn by Colleen A. Parkinson with varying degrees of trepidation, including the enticing subject matter—the promise of an end-of-the-world zombie apocalypse—and the cautious apprehension of all those movies and streaming series that have engraved their unyielding expectations and clichéd certainties into our skulls, not to mention the books on which they are based. However, those initial concerns are easily and quickly put to rest upon surrendering to this author’s skillful writing and narrative skills. The dystopian elements of Parkinson’s engaging immersion into civilizational collapse are familiar in a weirdly comfortable way—we recognize the territory—but her characters are unique, irresistible, fascinating, and unforgettable, and the reader becomes entirely invested in their personal destinies. Beware the power of this fictional seduction, however, for Ms. Parkinson is unflinching in her dispensation of providence and fate.  

A key component of Colleen A. Parkinson’s compelling novel, The Dreadful Dawn (Book One of the Claiming Destination series), is a connective thread too essential to be treated as mere subtext. Her protagonists share a deeply held Christian faith, which grounds their actions and attitudes while not defining or constraining their experiences according to religious doctrine—this is not a “Left Behind” treatment of “The Last Days.” However, such a faith-based depiction of motivations and orientations offers a unique perspective largely unexplored in most approaches to the genre. The result is an exciting, innovative, and psychologically complex story about zombies eating humans—not funny, rest assured.