Customer Reviews

City of the Dead

5 star:		(47)
4 star:		(40)
3 star:		(34)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(20)

 

 

This sequel to The Rising doesn't exactly pick up where its predecessor left off--it actually starts a few minutes before, a handy recap I suppose for those who experience a timelag between the reading of these two books, which are more like halves of the same volume than discrete stories. I would not recommend reading this one without having read the one that comes before.

This one is perhaps a little more complicated and slightly less engaging than its predecessor, but it remains very entertaining. Keene has taken the zombie genre into some interesting alternate directions, drawing inspiration perhaps from the Italian zombie masters or from Sam Raimi's Evil Dead series. I admire the way he balances his apocalyptic subject matter with his highly sympathetic cast. There's plenty of mayhem here (and extremely graphic mayhem at that), but the story still has a heart.

At the end of THE RISING, Jim had fought his way across several states through zombies and militia to try and reach his son. Just as the book stopped, we did not know what he found at his son's house. This book takes up just before the end of the first with a little repetition and we finally find out the status of Jim's son.

Right from the start Jim, Martin, Frankie and the rest of the party are on the run from organized zombies. We have zombies torching houses and mounting high-speed chases. This all gets Jim and company into a New York skyscraper reputed to be impenetrable. The part joins several hundred survivors in the building. Meanwhile Ob and the zombies are mobilizing on a grand scale. Their talk is to wipe out all humans so that the next wave can begin (plants and insects).

Death and gore are major parts of this book (as in the first). We learn a little more about the zombies and their purpose. The action builds and builds as the book enters the final phases. With only a dozen pages to go fates are still unknown and the reader has to go right to the final page. Unlike the first book, this does wind up the saga although many readers will probably not like the way the ending is handled. Personally I felt there could have been a few more pages or paragraphs at the end to fully close the book.

Still, the book was fun to read and it was a pleasure to find out how things went after the end of THE RISING. You are going to have to read it to find out what happens but I will warn you that at the very end you may not be completely satisfied.

**Some spoliers ahead**

While I absolutely loved The Rising, I found City of the dead to be a copy of other zombie movies/books. While in the Rising this fact was also true, it was masked by the fact that Keene gave the audience a new angle on the zombie world by making his zombies intelligent and able to do things (like run and drive and organize) that had been the main drawbacks of zombies in the past (and the savior of most of the main characters...the only power of zombies was in their great numbers and ability to surprise).

But in this novel, Keene seems to forget (a little bit) about the new trail that he blazed in the first novel. Although the revealing that the zombies are actually deamons from another dimension was a very good twist, and the fact that he gives them a back story and even organization into different groups also adds to the book.

But then Keene runs dead into the wall that countless other zombie/horror writers have run into before: he creates a social criticism. Although this is an important part of many zombie works...IT'S BEEN DONE BEFORE. From 28 days later to countless others, the refugees of zombie attacks ALWAYS find someone in power who takes them in, goes nuts, and does something stupid to get all the people he's protecting killed. Keene does this as well, and I would've liked to seen something a little more original.

But the diologue was again very good as well as the first person details and descriptions provided by the deamon lord Ob. But the storyline up till the end was predictable and slow. But the ending was very well done and the religious undertones also added quite a bit to the ending. Not a bad read, but not as good or original as the first.

I had my Iron Chef America moment and put this book down and walked away from the book, series, and author after one of the characters commits a sex act with a captive zombie. Over the line. Too much. Unnecessary. I read the first book in this series, The Rising, and liked it ok, even though I was not particularly thrilled with the possessed style of zombie and the concept of animal zombies. I always love the initial zombie outbreaks and the descent of civilization into chaos.

This book starts out ok with the end of Jim's quest to find his son. After that initial scene, the continuous gore did get tedious. When I reached the scene mentioned above, I stopped reading. I usually can't get enough of zombie stories, but this was more than enough. If you are looking for a good zombie read, check out J.L Bourne's Day By Day Armageddon, Recht's Morningstar Strain series, Brooks' World War Z, and Frater's As the World Dies series. Those are the best I've read so far.

I read the first book in this series The Rising, and i loved it. I thought it was really unique, descriptive, exciting, and the ending although it was harsh, It was okay with me, because not everything has a happy ending. When I saw the sequel "City of the Dead" I assumed that it takes the ending of the rising and went even further, I was right. The same characters are ther (surprise they arent dead! yay!), Jim, Martin, Frankie,Ob, Danny and many many many (more than i can count) more. It takes place in a skyscraper in New York, built by a man who has delusions of grandeur, his name is Ramsey.The zombies, who we now know are demons reanimating the dead bodies to take over the earth to ultimatly destroy it. Ob is the leader, and no he cant fit into your pocket easily when you have your period. Anyway, grossness ensues, maggots, fluids, screaming, defleshing, rats, intestines, rot,sex with dead people...the old standbys, and our "survivors" manage to survive through another onslaught of zombie buffet, They find an underground tunnel, a promise of a bomb shelter, and in the end AGAIN, NO ONE SURVIVES, Keene makes us love these people, love this poor child danny and his father who dies saving him, love the prostitute, the cat God, the homeless pigpen but he KILLS them! and the world is destroyed! SO what was the point of this book? why keep us at the edge of our seat again,when we accepted the death of everyone at the last one, why give us hope that maybe the tiny few would prevail? I thought up untill the last paragraph that they would survive, and whammo, i was knocked off my feet..again! I put the book down and said "if Keene comes out with a book called "garden of the dead" because the plants are the next to be possessed by demons, i am turning the other way".

Brian Keene is officially my hero. I'll get into that more in a little bit though. Remember Jim Thurmond? In The Rising, Jim traveled across five states to find his son, Danny. The ending of The Rising was left wide open, and the issue of Jim's son did not get resolved until this book.

The zombies, if we can even call them that, since they are actually demons possessing corpses. Basically, the demons want to kill every human on earth to make God mad and to punish him for sending them away. When a human dies, a demon crosses the void and inhabits the human. It can recall all the human's memories, which is how these zombies can drive cars and shoot guns and talk intelligibly. There are also zombie birds, which can strip a man to the bone in minutes, and zombie dogs and rats too.

Jim Thurmond and his party manage to make it to New Jersey, and then get rescued by the helicopter team employed by an eccentric billionaire who built a disaster-proof skyscraper in New York City. When the only humans left alive are in that building, the zombies prepare to wage war. Their plan cannot enter its second stage until all the humans are gone.

It is absolutely essential that The Rising is read first, otherwise nothing in City of the Dead will make sense. It's totally worth it though, since both books are awesome. The Rising did start off a little slow, but quickly picked up the pace until the last 250 pages were basically a tidal wave of blood, death, and horror.

Back to why Brian Keene is my hero: first, he employed zombie suicide bombers, which is an awesome idea, especially since zombies can't technically commit suicide since they are already dead; second, his zombies sang a paraphrased version of The Bloodhound Gang's "The Roof Is On Fire", a song that I've loved for a long time; and finally, because Brian Keene had the guts to end the book the way he did. I've been saying for years that someone should end a book that way, since it's so unexpected and shocking and not happily-ever-after, ride-into-the-sunset, and cop-outish like most horror books. The ending surprised me so much, and I'm so glad someone finally ended a book this way.

Luckily I picked up and read The Rising just recently. So I knew there was a part 2, `City of the Dead', waiting to be read when I put down the first book. I would have been tearing my hair out if I hadn't known there would be a part 2 after reading the ending of The Rising. What a great way to end a book, cliffhanger or not. Thankfully, for me at least, it was a cliffhanger.

`City of Dead' picks up right where Keene left us; Frankie and Martin waiting for Jim to hopefully find his son and bring him back to the Humvee. Shots are heard inside the house...and a neighborhood of zombies are coming for them. I could actually feel the intensity and bewilderment that Jim and Frankie were going through while trying to fend off the zombies from coming into the house. Zombies dying left and right, while the two are backing up a stairway. Enough Zombies dead that more zombies had to crawl on top of them to get closer to our survivors. Breathe. A mass of undead shooting through windows. Smoke. Yes smoke. The zombies lit the house on fire. Breathe. BREATHE!

And that's just the first few pages. Keene had me breathless for probably 60-80 pages straight. A relentless assault that seems to never end. In this world of zombies, this would be what I would expect. If I was to be outnumbered millions to one, then I would think there would be no time to breathe. Constant running. Constant pain. Constant paranoia. No sleep.

But then the unexpected happens. A shining light in a tunnel of darkness. A savior is still on this Earth and he tries to save everyone he can. His name is Ramsey and he is the creator of Ramsey towers. A standing triumph in the middle of Manhattan that can withstand terrorist's attacks, power outages, and even Mother Nature herself. Ramsey has created a safe haven for survivors within the city. A city that is filled by millions of the walking dead. But this is Keene we are talking about here. Keene isn't going to let something like indestructibility stand in the way of the smart zombies he's created... hehe. You just know something bad is going to happen.

In `City of the Dead', Keene introduces us to a whole grip of new characters. A lot that are pretty interesting, or at least could have been I'm sure if the book was a lot thicker. I think we were introduced to many characters though because sometimes I would get them confused at times. But then again, it was nice to have a lot, because you still got attached to a lot of them, which made it kind of sad to have them taken away. Bates definitely had to be one of my new favorites of the book. An ex-marine. In charge of Ramsey's security. Was he to be trusted though? I wasn't sure, but the man knew how to take charge and not be a complete idiot in a zombiefied world. And I liked that.

A few gripes I had about the book though was that it seemed like Keene was going to keep this book going into a third book or even a series. It seemed like he set so much up for more books. The brothers of Ob, Ab and Api, who are waiting to take over the world with Ob and are getting impatient since all the humans aren't dead. The constant mentioning of magic, which is the only thing that will be able to kill the `zombies'. The multiple thought out escape plans to get out of the tower and NY in case the zombies take it over. And there were a few other things that have escaped me now that also gave me hope, but there was enough to warrant, in my opinion, at least another. Which leads me to this...

Dead Sea is NOT a third part. Now I'm sure some people knew that, but I didn't. I got into Keene just a few weeks ago and it started with `The Rising'. Looking at the covers of all three books will make you think they are a series of 3 at least. Two hands...coming out of a window (The Rising), a manhole (City of the Dead), and a Ship's Window (Dead Sea). All three are about zombies by the description on the book. I like to read as little about a book as I can until I get to read the book, especially books in a series. If you don't know someone is going live in a book, but then read the back of a book later in the series and you see their name...then there is no suspense since you know they live. FOOLED. Yep. I was fooled.

In the end, I think Keene left a lot of things open. I feel like I was sort of cheated. I hope, for my sake at least, that Keene will continue this series somewhere down the road. But that didn't ruin the book for me. I just can not give it less than 5 stars just because I didn't like the ending. If that's the way he wanted to end it, then that's up to him. It's his story. But the ride to the end was exhilarating and a heck of a lot of fun.

I really enjoyed this book, the sequel to "The Rising". I have read a lot of horror over the years. This is certainly not the best written, the most unique, or even the goriest, but it is a fun ride. Lots of action, fairly skimpy plot, but loads of enjoyment. Keene knows how to write action, and he doesn't let up from the first to the last page. This book takes place immediately after the first book. It actually backs up a few moments. The story basically involves humanities last stand in a fortified high rise in New York City. We get a lot of new characters besides those who survived the first book, and we get to learn a lot more about the demons/zombies. The ending is a dark one and it may not be to everyone's taste. I liked it just fine. I get enough of the Hollywood happy endings in my movies, a nice bleak ending is refreshing. Pick up the Rising, and then grab this book.

When I read the summary of this book and found that the survivors were hold up in a skyscraper in New York, I didn't see how the author could keep the tension up like he did in the first book "The Rising", but he did. I'm not sure about the ending, it's sad but justified. I also like the author's explanation of what caused the rising. Overall I would say a good book if you like Zombies.

I did not care for The Rising but I thought I would read the second book to see how the story ended (since the first book kind of cheated you by ending without a resolution). Unfortunately this book was more of the depressing same and maybe a bit worse. The super intelligent demon-zombies (you know the kind that can talk, shoot guns, fly heliocoptors, make wisecracks etc.) and all of the demon-zombie animals (you know all of the dead birds, squirrels, rabbits, rats, alligators, etc.) kill off everybody. I mean, come on, people do not stand a chance in this scenario where every single thing that dies comes back as a demon-zombie and the book is just basically an excuse to gruesomely kill every character that is introduced. Depressing and unenjoyable.