So I’ve finished The Last President, the (for now) final Daybreak Volume. It suffers a bit from a split personality because the narrative is much more expansive, brings in a lot of secondary characters but, it turns out, that’s what John Barnes wanted all along, the publisher just wanted his scope to be narrower and they have now parted ways on this series. Anyway armed with that knowledge I can see how it could have benefited the other two books (Barnes states he wants to rewrite the first two, not take anything out but add).

Anyhoo, things seem to be going well, TOO WELL in the first half of the book and sure enough we get sucker punched as to how well Daybreak has played us, turned us against ourselves and in the matter of a week, reduced most of the main players to husks of themselves. A lot of characters are killed, good, bad, and very very grey. (There’s one guy who’s a brilliant tactician and could restore the country if oh he hadn’t killed a rival in cold blood and is increasingly violent in bed, too bad he’s needed). 

Some of the mystery of Daybreak is revealed and makes it a little less scary but no less menacing.

There’s a little hope left at the end, but nothing as to what the other two books were trying to bring back.

Daybreak Zero is retty good, I still find the concept of Daybreak fascinating and scary as all hell (we’re still not quite sure what it is, a representation of our collective unconscious that said we don’t want to live on this planet anymore, an out of control meme, an intelligence, but it means to smash us and keep us down. It’s the suggestive part of it, the insidiousness of it, slowly been building over the years, that really is amazing and scary and it’s so hard to describe or pin down. It’s agents are much more normal tho). I’ll read a different book before going into the last book in the trilogy.

Oh and the Low on Taxes, High on Jesus express is still the best name for a campaign tour I have ever heard

Rereading Daybreak and I love the whole concept of “System Artifact” that basically our malaise and ennui with the current world turns into this self fulfilling message enacted by small affinity groups working together, not knowing they’re working together to bring down the Big System. The description of it, of how it works is pretty fucking scary.

Most of the time, Americans live together like a colony of clams, growing and feeding by tapping into each other’s resources, with nothing much going on beyond the individual level. The whole grows and flourishes because its members grow and flourish. It’s efficient but purposeless unless you regard growth itself as a purpose – which nearly all Americans do.

Cooperation for a common purpose is about as American as sacrificing virgins to the Corn God: Americans have heard of it, but as something long ago and far away, not something they do themselves. When the force of circumstances does drive Americans to common action, usually it looks like a herd of cattle, either milling about until they calm down, or briefly stampeding. An especially urgent need or clear vision can make Americans form up more like a flock of geese, with a few out front pretending to know where they are going, and everyone else honking to keep the temporary, efficient formation together.

At Midnight on October 29th, Americans were more like a wolf pack in which the alphas had just been shot: yapping, howling, growing, threatening, whimpering for comfort, barking defiance, and now and then, wheeling to maul each other.