History Literature / TheRadiantDawn

* AliensSpeakingEnglish: {{Justified}}. The Wutner craft orbiting Earth has been doing so since at least the beginning of the zombie war. The aliens aboard have been listening to us with advanced devices, and as such have decoded our language and developed programming for their universal translators.

* WentHorriblyWrong: The SUN laser. When she uss it, it locks Dawn in a chamber that gets superheated while she expended all of her magic to do as much damage as possible.

Humanity cannot fall. Not like this.

Humanity teeters on the brink of extinction. At the call of demon worshipers Aaron and Stacie Murphy, the dead have risen from the cemeteries across the world. In one short year, they have overtaken most of the world, and only a couple bastions of human power remain. Most of the world is a wasteland of undead. When the last humans die, the worshipers will be able to summon their lord to Earth. It is merely the mental faculties of the living humans preventing their summoning.

Behind the walls of her father's great fortress, heiress Dawn Cahill is prepared for war. Surviving humans have gathered at Light's Bulwark, and man the guns against the undead menace. Dawn believes her fortress can hold the dead back, but has no ambitions of stepping out from within her walls to challenge the royals in combat. They wield powerful magic and feel no pain, and Dawn's brigade faces unfathomable odds, flying stone constructs, and monstrous flesh golems that can shatter rock and steel like glass. But there is a power sleeping within her fortress, in a statue in her courtyard. The statue holds the power of the Solari, an ancient Greek warrior class who called upon Apollo's power to fight. By awakening this power, Dawn has magic of her own to fight the undead. The magic granted her the power to soar through the air, strike with tremendous power, and heal the wounds of her allies at a touch. Is it enough? Can humanity survive the greatest threat to its existence? Or will the dead and their demonic overlords claim this world as their own?

* HumanoidAliens: The Wutner, a species of blue-tinted stocky humanoid aliens with hooked claws.
* SimilarlyNamedWorks: This and ''VideoGame/FireEmblemRadiantDawn''.
* BigDamnHeroes: the titular character pulling this off twice.

** The other is remotely. The Swiss defenders are watching the undead army mobilizing, three million strong. Then a laser starts sweeping across the undead and killing half of their force in under two minutes.
* UnfinishedUntestedUsedAnyway: The SUN laser. In reality, it's just a mirror chamber to channel an omnidirectional light blast into one that was only pointed in one direction. It WentHorriblyWrong when Dawn used it, but from a different reason than expected — Dawn locked herself in a chamber that got superheated while she expended all of her magic to do as much damage as possible.
* WentHorriblyWrong: The SUN laser. When she used it, it locked Dawn in a chamber that got superheated while she expended all of her magic to do as much damage as possible. It worked, but...
* SealedEvilInACan: Tyadrig. Tyadrig was a demon lord sealed by Jehovah to prevent him from existing on the material plane. Along come his worshipers in modern times Aaron and Stacie to release him. It becomes the task of the heroes to stop him from being released.
* KeystoneArmy: Averted. [[spoiler:It isn't Aaron's death that stops the undead, but Stacie's surrender. Knowing that she can't summon Tyadrig without Aaron, she decides to let the heroes have an actual victory instead of a pyrrhic one and siphons the magic from all the undead.]]
* FlingALightIntoTheFuture: High Priestess Amynta did this when Athens was under siege by the Romans. Knowing that the Solari would not be able to break the siege, and that her and her sisters would all perish in the battle, the Solari statue was imbued with Apollo's power. The titular hero opened it and claimed the power for herself, becoming the first Solari High Priestess in two thousand years...right in the middle of the zombie apocalypse.
* OurZombiesAreDifferent: There are several types of undead. "Mindless" are the basic undead unit that shamble forward and attack on sight. "Cavaliers" are undead that use zombie beasts as mounts and serve as an extension of the psychic command that generals have over the mindless. "Generals", along with antagonists Aaron and Stacie, are intelligent liches that exert psychic control over other undead. "Necromancers" are a specific type of general that can raise corpses as mindless and can open portals between places in the world.
** The creation process for mindless is different than the one for generals. Generals are created in a ritual that is detailed for Aaron and Stacie's conversion. Mindless are raised by necromancers with demonic magic.
** Undead are magically powered and do not need to consume human flesh. They are effectively controllable troops that do not feel fear, cold, or pain and do not need food or sleep.
* ReligionOfEvil: The cult of Tyadrig, an evil demon lord whose goal is to slay Jehovah, the Christian God. The cult seeks to summon Tyadrig to Earth, but to do this, they have to annihilate all non-cult humans because hostile sentience on the planet interferes with the summoning ritual.
* DropShip: The Wutner drop pods, though they are sort of a cross between this trope and DropPod. What makes these similar to drop ships and less similar to drop pods is the tractor beam on the ship that can lift them off the planet.

* AliensSpeakingEnglish: Explained. The Wutner craft orbiting Earth has been doing so since at least the beginning of the zombie war. The aliens aboard have been listening to us with advanced devices, and as such have decoded our language and developed programming for their universal translators.
* UnholyMatrimony: Aaron and Stacie. This is stated outright that they are married to each other, yet they serve as the BigBad throughout the book.

* ForgedByTheGods: Though not technically forged by gods, Dawn's Solari Aegis was forged by priestesses of Apollo and contains the same magic wielded by his priestesses in battle.

* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: The main protagonist. Dawn, the titular character, is "radiant", as in, she wields light powers.
* BattleCouple: Dawn and Julius. Played oddly because Julius is fully willing to not contest Dawn charging into battle against clearly defined enemies and assumes she can handle herself,[[spoiler:but worries greatly about her being stabbed in the back by someone she doesn't think is an enemy.]]
* HiveQueen: Aaron controls the undead with a telepathic link. His does have limited extent and requires waypoints in the form of specialized undead — he telepathically links to the commanders, who link to the cavaliers, who link to the mindless and flesh golems. However, when the link is broken, mindless don't become any less dangerous. They just shamble towards the nearest living humans, seeking out sustenance.
* FeministFantasy: Played straight. Dawn, the main protagonist, is a OneWomanArmy and is not shown to have physical weaknesses, at least once she ascends. Her male partner takes a supporting role as a forklift operator who also functions as a warrior. Nadia and Laina also take major roles as the helicopter pilot and mythology expert respectively. On the side of the antagonists, Stacie is shown to be the more mature of the pair and is more intelligent than Aaron, who is boyish and impulsive.

* Hive Queen: Aaron controls the undead with a telepathic link. His does have limited extent and requires waypoints in the form of specialized undead — he telepathically links to the commanders, who link to the cavaliers, who link to the mindless and flesh golems. However, when the link is broken, mindless don't become any less dangerous. They just shamble towards the nearest living humans, seeking out sustenance.

* KeystoneArmy: Averted. [[spoilter:It isn't Aaron's death that stops the undead, but Stacie's surrender. Knowing that she can't summon Tyadrig without Aaron, she decides to let the heroes have an actual victory instead of a pyrrhic one and siphons the magic from all the undead.]]

* DropShip: The Wutner drop pods, though they are sort of a cross between this trope and DropPods. The ships themselves are only designed to go one way, though the orbital craft has a tractor beam that can lift them back off the planet's surface.
* DropPods: The Wutner drop pods. The ships themselves are only designed to go one way, though the orbital craft has a tractor beam that can lift them back off the planet's surface.

* Feminist Fantasy: Played straight. Dawn, the main protagonist, is a OneWomanArmy and is not shown to have physical weaknesses, at least once she ascends. Her male partner takes a supporting role as a forklift operator who also functions as a warrior. Nadia and Laina also take major roles as the helicopter pilot and mythology expert respectively. On the side of the antagonists, Stacie is shown to be the more mature of the pair and is more intelligent than Aaron, who is boyish and impulsive.

!! Tropes covered in this book include: