Title: Daybreak

Author: Brian Ralph

Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly 2013

Genre: Comics

Pages: 160

Rating: 5/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Library

You wake up in the rubble and see a ragged, desperate one-armed man greeting you. He takes you underground to a safe space, feeds you, offers you a place to sleep, and then announces that he'll take the first watch. It's not long before the peril of the jagged landscape has located you and your newfound protector and is scratching at the door.

What transpires is a moment-to-moment struggle for survival―The Road meets Dawn of the Dead. Daybreak is seen through the eyes of a silent observer as he follows his protector and runs from the shadows of the imminent zombie threat. Brian Ralph slowly builds the tension of the zombies on the periphery, letting the threat―rather than the actual carnage―be the driving force. The postapocalyptic backdrop features tangles of rocks, lumber, I-beams, and overturned cars that are characters in and of themselves.

We watched the television series last month and I had to pick up the original material. I sped through this slim graphic novel in record time. I was fascinated by the story and couldn’t wait to see what happened to our unseen narrator and the few we meet along the way. The last page was harrowing! I loved every single cell in this book. So good.

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