A fairly early novel by Hodge, DA has often been compared to The Stand and Swan Song for very good reasons. Published in 1988 and set in the same year, we begin with a long intro section where the various characters (and there are many) are given backstories before the virus hits. From the back blurb, we know a nasty virus is going to wipe out the USA if not the world, just like in the novels mentioned above. In this case, the 'bionic plague' is a version of the bubonic plague (aka black death)

A watered-down version of The Stand, sans the truly supernatural, and devoid of anything to really make it seem a work of its own. In modern terms, it reads like a seasonal arc of The Walking Dead without zombies. Good guys vs bad guys in a post-apocalyptic setting. Shorter than King's seminal work, it still feels too long for what it is.

Hmm. A rewrite of King's The Stand? That's pretty obvious to begin with. But the author should have taken more notice of the way King crafts his apocalyptic novel when he started to put together this bit of a mess. The Stand is a classic dystopian post-plague novel where a group of good people face off against a group of mostly bad people led by a very bad man. Throughout the novel each character arc is carefully crafted to bring the key people to one great moment of crisis where each plays thei...

Signed Limted Edition of 750

Excellent post-apocalyptic tale that should be mentioned right up there with The Stand and Swan Song, and what makes it different than those is the purely human element of this story. There are hints of preternatural occurrences, but for the most part, this tale is about the struggle of humans after a world-altering catastrophe to try and carry on, despite the temptations to revert to our baser natures. Yes, like the previous novels, there's the expected "two camps" - some humans band together c...

First book I ever really read outside of stuff you'd find in a school or the traditional horror novels because my girlfriends father at the time wanted to see if I actually my brain. Kept me hooked and I gobbled it up in just over a day. I try to reread it once a year because it is THAT good. This is the book that got me into reading for fun, which lead to DMing role playing games using story lines that kept my players coming back for more after the end of each session. Thank you Mr. Hodge. I ha...

Heavily influenced by Stephen King's The Stand, this virus driven Post-Apocalyptic story is set mainly in St. Louis Missouri. As with every story we have heroes and villains, good guys and bad. Jason is the flawed good guy and Travis is the flawed bad guy. We have a Randall Flagg-esque character named Peter Solomon, is he a man? or is he a God? why is he so bad? The good guys are menaced by the bad till they leave St. Louis for Heywood Texas, a community that Jason has found. There is much fight...

One Dark AdventureThis was refreshing read for me. I've owned the Cemetery Dance version of this book for several years, but never read it. I bought an ebook from Amazon and finally read it. I'm very new to Mr Hodge have read only one book prior, World Of Hurt being that book. I enjoyed it but for some reason I never read anything else. Last year I read Robert McCammon's Swan Song for the first time. I believe that Dark Advent deserves to be right beside it. Along with Robert Kirkman's The Walki...

Decided to read this one because it was compared to The Stand by Stephen King, which is my all time favourite book but this was just completely derivative and in a mediocre way.It wasn't terrible, I think he's a good writer and detailed with the descriptions of the surroundings; which I enjoy because it sets the scene and creates an atmospheric read.My favourite character was Peter Solomon, who is basically just Randall Flagg; apart from this character the character development was very poor and...

Like THE STAND, it brings forth the underside of human nature. The plot is well-crafted and the narrative is strong.

Saw this book mentioned in a discussion on Horror Aficionados, then saw it in the shelves of a used bookstore the very next weekend for a dollar. Happy to say, I didn't waste the dollar. It was an entertaining read, in spite of a lot of deja vu if you've read either The Stand or Swan Song. It's not as good as those two novels, but they're tough acts to follow. The main bad guy, Solomon Peter, is not as fleshed out as some of his henchmen are, and his motives are never particularly clear. Also th...

So you know oft quoted and overused phrase "never judge a book by it's cover"? I don't think that statement could ring more true than it does for this book. Yes, I will whole-heatedly, 100% agree that the cover for "Dark Advent" is ridiculous, silly, and quite stupid. Intact, it might possibly be the dumbest cover I've ever seen, or, at least, the most blatantly misleading one. I'll give a very minor spoiler alert here and say that Nowhere within these pages do we get anything even close to a pi...

Excellent read. More realistic than the influencing novels. Def in my top ten books. The cover is misleading as it does not pertain to the story what so ever. Relatable characters, even the “bad guys”. A must read for post-apocalyptic fans.

Pinnacle horror at it's best. The cover made me believe this to be a cheesy story about kids going to hell or plagued by a demon. What we get is an end of the world story. A very well done one at that. This book was 448 pages of small writing, and in my case, dogeared and yellowed. Most books like this I would of gave up on. This one, I charged ahead.A group of people from in and around St. Louis find themselves coming together in a department store to last out the end of days. Meanwhile a group...

⁣Dark Advent⁣By Brian Hodge.⁣Pinnacle Horror.⁣1989.⁣⁣🎃🎃🎃🎃🎃⁣⁣Dark Advent is one of the best novels I have ever read. This one goes beyond the scope of this Instagram page. It's one of those rare books from the horror paperback boom that isn't just a great example of what that relatively small world of genre writing has to offer, but a straight up excellent piece of fiction.⁣⁣In fact, I think the #paperbacksfromhell cover art treatment that this one got, probably hurt sales. It certainly couldn't

A grand tale of good vs evil after a plague ravages the world. Well written characters on both sides of the struggle.

Yes, I don't read "horror" often, but in the last year I've finally read The Stand and Swan Song, in addition to this one.I read them because they also use the theme of an apocalyptic event and survival afterwards. Dark Advent, in my opinion, isn't really horror (despite the awful book cover on this paperback edition), but rather "horrific". Evil and the things evil people do is one of the aspects of the book- my least favorite part.The average, basically good, people are the interesting part. I...

Excellent book. Not going to compare it to other books as it stands well on its own.

This hardcover edition copy is one of 750 copies signed and numbered by Brian Hodge.

Quite a bit like The Stand, with elements of the Mad Max movies, and other familiar stories, but not nearly as good. Felt contrived in places, and I wasn't enthused with the demise of certain characters, even though I knew that not all of them would make it. Also felt like the author couldn't decide whether to add supernatural elements or not, and in some places, I felt like he switched back and forth. (Mostly the main villain - was he human, or something more? Think he was supposed to be human,...