Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: Firestorm
Paperback | Kindle
By Greg Keyes
Titan Books
Release date: May 27, 2014

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: Firestorm is a novel that’s the official movie prequel to the upcoming Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, which is the sequel to 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes — the reboot of the franchise that began with 1968’s Planet of the Apes — and is very similar in premise to the fourth installment of the series, 1972’s Conquest of the Planet of the Apes.

Since Dawn picks up about 10 years after the events of Rise, which saw a group of genetically enhanced apes break out of captivity, Firestorm bridges the gap between the two stories, although it concentrates on the time right after Rise. Dawn, which arrives in theaters on July 11, 2014, finds humanity on the brink of extinction, as a pandemic believed to be caused by the apes wipes out most of the humans. The prequel novel is an original story about how the virus was first detected and what happened in the early days of contagion.