City Of The Dead by Brian Keene
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Book Reviews of City Of The Dead
Book Review: The Sequel
Summary: 4 Stars
This book starts immediately where "The Rising" left off. If you liked the first book you should like this one as it continues the storyline with no pause what-so-ever.
As for writing style, I think Brian Keene is tops. He has started with a bang and I hope he can keep his level of writing this good.
Highly Recommended.
Book Review: Worthy sequel.
Summary: 3 Stars
Brian Keene, City of the Dead (Leisure, 2005)
Sometimes you finish a book and just have to sit there and say "WHAT???". The rest of the book doesn't matter, it's just those final few pages that have you wondering for weeks afterwards whether it was actually a good book or not. Where I'm concerned, the jury's still out on that one, so I'll just have to report on the rest of the book and leave you to make the decision about the ending for yourself.
City of the Dead picks up where The Rising left off (actually, there's a bit of overlap in the first few pages; The Rising ends with the mad rush into the house, and City of the Dead begins with our intrepid heroes getting off the Interstate a few minutes before). Jim, Frankie, and Martin are in New Jersey to see if Jim's son is still alive. They pick up another survivor, Don DeSantos, early on, and the group (which may or may not contain Jim's son-- if you've read The Rising, I'm certainly not going to spoil it for you here) go on battling zombies until they're found by some survivors patrolling in a helicopter and taken to what is supposed to be a virtually impregnable fortress against the dead-- a Manhattan high-rise.
If this is suddenly starting to sound familiar, you're not alone. But if City of the Dead is a ripoff of Romero's Land of the Dead, then Brian Keene is probably the fastest writer in existence. (The movie was released on June 18, 2005; the book was released in May of the same year. Even if Keene somehow had access to the dailies, you're talking about five to ten thousand words a day, plus revision and all that stuff, and then Leisure would have to buy it, go through the editorial process, print it... you get the idea.) I have to look at them as two entirely separate entities, and from a conceptual standpoint, Keene's novel is a clear winner; he set up the groundwork for his "zombie" invasion in The Rising, and here fills us in on exactly what the zombies and their leader are. At that point, what was originally looking like a zombie novel basically becomes a survival-thriller; the zombies are more undead commandos than flesh-eating horrors. If you get rid of that fact that they're undead, this might as well be a war novel. And Keene taking that approach does have strengths; the typical zombie isn't all that much fun as an antagonist, given his rather limited range. These guys, though, they're clever, intelligent, and charismatic (if you ignore the rotting flesh). Keene can set up this impregnable fortress and have zombies plan how they might assault it, rather than simply throwing themselves at it and getting repelled again and again. The downside is that if you're looking for a zombie novel, you may be in for a disappointment, and Keene definitely had the first book angled towards zombie fans.
And then there's the ending. Which doesn't come out of nowhere, but still. I can't tell if it's brilliant or frustrating. Or both. Again, I'll leave you to decide. In any case, these are books that are worth your time, but be prepared. ***
Book Review: The end is near
Summary: 5 Stars
This was a very fast paced story that really made you feel for the characters. It has action as well as great human interaction.Book Review: Keene's got game!
Summary: 5 Stars
This was my first Brian Keene novel. My consumption of horror fiction was previously limited to Stephen King and Peter Straub, and I was looking for something new in the field.
Keene did not disappoint. I haven't been freaked out by a horror novel since The Shining (when the woman's ghost sat up in the bath tub). This book contains some dark imagery that will keep you up at night. It sets your imagination running.
The premise of City of the Dead is a plague of the undead. Instead of being the usual mindless eating machines, Keene's zombies are clever and diabolical. Some of the negative reviews indicate that not every reader was pleased with this innovation; but there is no reason why *every* fictional work about the undead must conform to the George Romero version of zombies. Vampires have changed a lot since Bram Stoker; why shouldn't zombie fiction depart from the Romero paradigm?
Horror fiction is at its best when it has themes that go beyond the monsters. Keene's book ends on a reflective note about the nature of good and evil in the world. This added depth to a story that was already quite entertaining.
There are a few negatives, but nothing that would cause me to change this to a 4-star review. For the sake of full disclosure, here they are:
The first one is the excessive, in-your-face gore. A book about zombies is by definition bound to be a bad choice for lunchtime reading material; but Keene pushed the boundaries even by the standards of the genre. After a while, I tired of reading the details of the zombie diet. It was like, "OK, I get it: the zombies dice people up and eat them. Enough already."
The book also contains a disturbing sexual scene that will offend some readers. I'll leave this to your imagination.
As several other readers pointed out, portions of the dialogue between the zombie/demons seemed contrived. (But then again, how exactly *should* zombie/demons talk?)
At the very least, you will find City of the Dead to be an entertaining page-turner. If you have lamented horror's decline since the end of the 1980s, then you owe it to yourself to check out Brian Keene's work.
Book Review: masterful
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the best new horror writer I know of, and is up there with S.King and Dean Koontz in the privileged place of excellent horror writers.
There are also some humorous scenes, and is refreshing the unusual finale.