In the apocalypse of the mind, an angel chooses to stay.
Review: “Daytide” by Chris Panatier—A Mythic Masterpiece of Hope and Despair
Chris Panatier’s Daytide is one of those rare novels that refuse to stay inside a single genre. It will not be defined. We get grief-soaked realism, psychological horror, and theological fiction, and it quietly expands into something mythic and luminous. To call it “genre-bending” is insufficient. Daytide is genre-breaking. It dismantles the scaffolding of familiar apocalyptic stories and rebuilds it into something that reaches far further, is sadder, and unexpectedly transcendent. Let’s talk about it.
Daytide‘s remise alone is arresting. The Longing, a ruthless contagion of the mind that only ever ends in self-destruction, has swept across all of humanity. There is no fever, no lesions, no monstrous mutation, just an overwhelming compulsion toward death. Relief comes by blade, bullet, or flame. A girl named Kaya chose fire. In her absence, her friend Adam is left hollowed out and clings to a The Longing support group as his final fragile tether to meaning. From the outset, Panatier situates us in the aftermath of these conditions’ genesis. This apocalypse is intimate. It lives in group therapy and in the silence of now-empty rooms.
When Father Carnoth enters the group claiming to have discovered a cure, Adam’s scepticism is expected. The novel frames itself around the duo’s tension. Faith versus despair. Hope versus exhaustion. But Daytide is far too ambitious to rest in that binary. As Adam and Carnoth investigate the mysterious presence that periodically appears in the cathedral’s steeple, the story begins to unfold. What unfolds is not a cure but a revelation that shifts the scale of the narrative to an entirely new level.
And this is where our Hadriel emerges. Oh Hadriel. She is not merely another character in the unfolding mystery, but its axis. Hadriel, an angel dwelling in Highside, is not introduced with bombast or heroic framing. There is no prophecy thundered from the heavens. Instead, her power is revealed through the endurance and fierce love of her sister, Ezbiel, and stands in defiance of The Longing affecting Lowside (terrestrial Earth). If The Longing represents annihilation and inward collapse, Hadriel represents radical outwardness, sacrifice, and unwavering will.
In many ways, she embodies a Tolkien-esque spirit. Stick with me here. She evokes a mythic resonance. Tolkien’s heroes are often underestimated. Their strength is not dominating but refusing to surrender to despair. Hadriel is luminous without being untouchable. She is powerful without being far detached from suffering. Her heroism is not about conquest but about preservation. It is about choosing to stand against oblivion.
She is flawed, and this is why we love her. Panatier handles her development with remarkable control. He does not flatten her into a symbol, even though she carries that immense weight. Hadriel is both cosmic and intimate. She operates on an ancient scale but her impact is profoundly personal. Where Adam’s arc is about navigating life with an inevitable end, Hadriel’s is about transforming and reframing the narrative of this inevitable end into one of defiant hope.
The cathedral steeple sequences crystallise this dissonance. What appears in the steeple is not a simple plot device but a threshold between the rational and the numinous. The novel moves from realism into something liturgical. And Hadriel stands at the centre of this transition. She is our bridge between genres. Where horror yields to myth, and the mundane collides with the eternal. What makes her the perfect hero is not that she “solves” anything in a neat or clinical sense.
Daytide resists tidy resolution. Instead, in Hadriel, Panatier redefines what salvation looks like. The novel asks whether healing isthe eradication of pain or the courage to endure it for someone else. Through her, he suggests that the antidote to annihilation is not domination, but communion.
There is something profoundly radical in that choice. Apocalyptic fiction can often centre on rugged survivalists or saviours wielding weapons. Hadriel’s strength is different. It is sacrificial and steeped in love. She does not conquer despair in one explosive fashion. She absorbs it and refuses to let it have the final word. This is where another Tolkien comparison feels apt. Please indulge me. Tolkien wrote of eucatastrophe, a sudden turn toward grace when all seems lost.
Hadriel embodies that turn. Her presence reframes the darkness not as a foregone conclusion, but as a battleground where hope is still alive. The novel’s title, Daytide, is purposeful and when you read the book you will understand its meaning. But if you will allow me one more indulgence, it can also suggest the coming of the light of hope. It is steady and it wants to wash back what the darkness claimed.
Panatier’s prose rises to meet Hadriel’s significance. The language shifts subtly around her, becoming reverent without tipping into sentimentality. There is a sense of awe but also tenderness. But Hadriel has no time for sentiments. Heroism in Daytide is not painless. It is chosen in full awareness of the suffering ahead. By the novel’s conclusion, it is clear that Adam was the vein of entry, but Hadriel is its beating heart. She may hold the key to salvation but she does not deny the powers that be.
She understands what she is up against. The pandemic seems to insist death is the only relief but Hadriel knows there is way more to this unexplained affliction than what sits at the surface. Where the terrestrial world has normalized self-destruction, she seeks absolution. How The Longing relates to Highside and its angels is something you have to read for yourself.
Daytide is not an easy book. It confronts heavy topics like grief, suicide, and existential despair without looking away. But it also dares to imagine something vast and sacred that pushes back against that void. In Hadriel, Panatier crafts a hero who feels urgently necessary. A figure who breaks the confines of genre and stands firmly in myth. She never wanted to be, but she is the hope in a world light hardly touches. In a literary landscape of countless apocalyptic tales, Daytide does something rare. It does not just chronicle the end. It imagines the possibility of a brand new beginning. I believe this is Panatier’s best book to date and his magnum opus.
Daytide feels less like a novel and more like a hand reaching into the void. It does not dilute hard topics. You feel their weight and terrible seduction. It insists that despair is not the final authority. There is something devastatingly beautiful about this insistence. Well over a week later, I feel cracked open. The story dared to imagine that even at the edge of the end, someone may still love and choose us, no matter the cost. That someone might still stay. Daytide does not conquer darkness. It stands inside of it. And in that fierce and trembling hope, it gives us something unforgettable.
Thank you, Mitch at Rapture Publishing, and Chris, for sending me an ARC. This book is forever embedded in my heart. Daytide is available via Rapture’s website (click the link). This Deluxe Limited Edition Hardcover will be published in March 2026. It is limited to 350 copies, all signed by Chris Panatier and Philip Fracassi, who wrote the introduction. It also includes wraparound full-colour artwork and 10+ interior illustrations by Chris. As of this writing, there are still copies available, so go snag one while you can. THE DAYTIDE COMETH! You don’t want to miss this one!
PHOTO COURTESY OF RAPTURE PUBLISHING
DAYTIDE by Chris Panatier
DAYTIDE by Chris Panatier featuring art by Chris Panatier and an introduction by Philip Fracassi.
Pitched as: black metal Wizard of Oz
Death comes to those who live.
The Longing is here: a ruthless psychological pandemic that only ever ends one way. Most find relief in a bullet or a blade. Kaya Sinh chose fire.
With Kaya gone, her friend Adam has only the support group they’d attended to keep him going. He’s at his lowest when a priest named Hayle Carnoth appears at group one night, claiming to have discovered a cure for the Longing. Thinking it a crude effort by the priest to seek members for his dwindling congregation, Adam drives him off.
But he keeps coming back.
With the Longing closing in, Adam agrees to let Father Carnoth share what he’s discovered. They visit a nearby cathedral, where something has appeared inside the steeple.
Deluxe Limited Edition Hardcover to be published March 2026. Details include:
- Limited to 350 copies, all signed by Chris Panatier and Philip Fracassi
- Wrap-around full-color artwork by Chris Panatier
- 10+ interior illustrations by Chris Panatier
- Bookmark
- Offset printed on an acid-free archival quality paper stock
- High end cloth binding
- Hot-foil stamping on cover and spine
- Smythsewn binding
- Matching head and tail bands
- Illustrated full-color end sheets
- Sewn-in ribbon page marker
*TURPENTINE CANISTER PICTURED NOT INCLUDED WITH PURCHASE
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