Customer Reviews

Terminal

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Not the supernatural horror type of "The Rising" and "City of the Dead" (at least, it mostly isn't), "Terminal" is the story of Tommy O'Brien, a loving father and husband, who finds out he has cancer--terminal. The doctors give him a month, three at the most. Tommy suddenly finds himself staring at death, wondering how his wife and son will carry on without him. The small town of Hanover is stricken with poverty, divided into three camps: those who listen to rap, those who listen to metal, and those who listen to country. Everyone is poor. Tommy can't even pay the bills...and that's before he gets laid off from his job.

What is a man to do? If you are a small-town worker with nothing to lose, you decide to take care of your family. And Tommy starts eying the town bank. With the help of two friends--John and Sherm--Tommy is about to pull off the ultimate bank heist. Except things inevitably go wrong, especially when one of your friends doesn't know what he's doing, and the other is homicidal...and Tommy will meet up with a young boy, a little kid who can do extraordinary things, and may just be able to cure Tommy...if Tommy can keep him alive.

"Terminal" takes the most suspenseful novel you've ever read, and jacks it up a couple hundred notches. Rivetting, narrated by a guy most of us can relate to, this is a novel that will scare your pants off, and yet make you think about what YOU would do, when you had nothing to lose. Brian Keene has proven himself willing to tackle subjects that most authors won't dare approach, and he does it yet again in "Terminal." This is one that will appeal to the general suspense fans, as well as those who liked Keene's earlier novels. A sure-fire winner.

This is an excellent lightning-paced suspense novel. Keene takes on a tone and style that will surprise those who only know his work through the RISING/CITY OF THE DEAD books.

Keene takes about two pages to win you over, as the main character, a hard-luck young man trying to support his family in a PA town with a desolate economy, is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Things then get seriously messed up when he decides to provide for their future by going all out.

The dialouge is dead-on, no plot holes found, this is just a great read. All lovers of dark fiction with heart should check this out.

Brian Keene's TERMINAL is a unique piece of horror/thriller fiction..IT COULD BE REAL....and I beleive most of it to have happened. Powerful is a great description. Mr. Keene shows us the dark human heart...and can relate with what the author shows us...because it is real.

No purple prose..no zombies...no vampires...no witches.

Just pure honest dreading-the-next-page-but-I-have-to-read-it writing.

Brilliant.

Since I'm on a Brian Keene kick right now (thanks, John!), I took the book Terminal with me on vacation. This was an excellent read reminiscent of Koontz and King's current supernatural storytelling.

Tommy O'Brien is one of those small-town guys who works at the local foundry, lives in a double-wide trailer, and is sinking deeper in debt with no real hope of rising above it all. If it wasn't for his wife and small child who he dearly loves, you could pretty much paint him as white trailer-park trash living for beer, cigarettes, and his next one-night stand. What little he does have to live for comes crashing down when he's diagnosed with terminal cancer at the age of 25, and he's got about a month to live. He tries hard to hide it from his wife, as well as the fact that he just got laid off from the foundry too. With no way out, he plans a bank heist with two friends in order to attempt to leave his wife and child with something more than a pile of debt after he dies. But the heist goes wrong when one of his friends starts killing hostages, and the other friend (who's driving the get-away car) is shot by someone else. The situation continues to go downhill quickly as he watches his friend slowly die from the gutshot. But to his amazement, a small child who's a hostage has the ability to cure injury and illness by touching the victim. He heals the gunshot wound and cures O'Brien's cancer. But now Tommy isn't sure he can save the hostages from his other friend's increasingly erratic behavior and intent to kill everyone...

There were a number of things I liked about this novel. For one, it wasn't as "way out there" as some supernatural thrillers can get. Koontz was like that with his earlier work, where every book seemed to have a killer zombie. The current work is more "mainstream" in story-line, so you can more readily put yourself in the story and identify with the characters. Keene is at this point with Terminal, and you could identify with the helplessness of O'Brien and his situation. I also thought the pacing of the story was perfect, as well as the premise of robbing a bank when any punishment they can hand out is meaningless due to your short lifespan.

For readers who like King and Koontz, I'd highly recommend adding Keene to that list. And starting with Terminal would be a nice point of entry...

You're down on your luck: lost your dead-end job, got cancer, only have weeks to live... So, what do you do? If you're Tommy O'Brien and his friends (one of whom is not-so-stable) you rob a bank.

Planning the job is straight forward for Tommy, John, and the shady (and possibly demon-possessed) Sherm. But, as tends to happen with bank jobs, it all goes down hill from there. Gunfights, bloodshed, madness, and miracles round off this fast-paced thriller.

While the premise may sound tired, just as he did with his zombie novels Keene has brought power back to the grand old tale of the bank job. Not only has he put a touch of unique, supernatural slant on the tale he has done something so many authors strive to do their entire careers and fail: Keene has written a book that has a huge, beating heart that anybody who has ever been down on their luck (and who hasn't?) will easily relate to and fall in love with. Quite frankly, folks, I'm convinced these characters are out there living real lives somewhere right now (well, those who survived anyway!) and Keene simply wrote their biography. Buy this book now before it disappears.

Tommy O'brien is having one of those days. You know the kind. Very literally, nothing could make it worse. He's been to see his doctor, and the news is not good. He's dying, and there is nothing he can do about it. He has a prescription, but of course it costs more than he makes. He needs rent, groceries, bills paid, and some beer, but can only afford the beer. Life could not suck much worse...except that it could

In TERMINAL Brian Keene has brought the word irony to new levels. Life can always get worse. Not only can it get worse, but it can go several shades of weird on you in two shakes of a dog's tail, and for Tommy O'Brien, this becomes more and more obvious as the novel progresses.

There are worse things than being poor. There are worse fates than dying of horrible disease. There are worse ideas than robbing a bank, and there are stranger things in the world than you can imagine - but Brian Keene is available to help you with this latter. Terminal is a tour de force of twists and turns that never really settle into a comfortable mold. When Tommy O'Brien and his friends make that bank-robbing choice, everything goes south very quickly. They are stuck with a hostage situation, one another, and a host of characters they could never have anticipated stacked up between themselves and success. Tommy, a basically good guy trying to provide for his family, is sucked along in the center of the vortex.

There is a lot of introspection in this novel, and there are some wonderful characterizations. The plot twists hit you out of the blue, leaving you alternately laughing at and deeply saddened for the protagonist, his buddies, and those they encounter along the way. It would be difficult to be precise without providing spoilers, but suffice it to say that Keene has hit the nail directly on the head with street-wise, down-to-earth characters suffering all the standard woes of the world - and instead of helping them through their troubles, he piles it on like God assaulting Job until you think they have to snap.

This is not an uplifting novel, and though it is filled with messages and hidden truths, you won't come away from it loving the protagonist, or fulfilled by magical resolution of impossible tragedy. This is a gritty work, dark and desolate as the lives and dreams of its characters. A fine novel by a talented author,

I have mixed feelings for Brian Keene's Terminal. Selfishly, I originally didn't want to buy this book because I enjoy Brian's horror stories so much, I thought that if Terminal did well, he'd leave the horror genre behind and write straight fiction like Robert McCammon did. We need Brian to continue writing horror! But eventually I caved in and gave Terminal a chance.

The buildup for the first half is quite good and feels very real (except for the clichéd Wallace scene in the alley). However, when the action really starts, the smooth, colorful writing becomes forced with awkward scenes of violence (the coincidence with Kelvin was ridiculous) that made me think Brian was doing what he thought was best for a Terminal action movie and not what's best for the story and characters he so carefully fleshed out. Although I liked the gimmick with Benjy, again, it felt out of place in this story.

The clichéd hostages in the bank bothered me as well. In this small bank with three employees, you have the following customers from all walks of life -- a bible thumper, an undercover cop, a comic book geek, an old man with a heart problem, an old boyfriend of a teller, a woman with a child, etc. If Tommy and his gang were watching the bank and doing their job, why didn't they simply wait until the majority of the customers left the bank? The front window is established as large and the interior clearly visable. Still, Terminal has a few surprises and a likable protagonist. It's definitely worth a look.

On a side note, I don't know why this book was nominated for A Bram Stoker award. It is not that the quality is not there, but simply, it is NOT A HORROR NOVEL.

In his excellent zombie novels Brian Keene showed that he knows how to write a sprawling, fast-paced epic story with multiple viewpoints. In "Terminal," he shows that he's equally adept at delivering a tight, single-viewpoint story that will tear at your heart as quickly as you can turn the pages.

This book is very reminiscent of the best of Stephen King's early years. Tommy O'Brian is your average American blue-collar worker ... except that he's young and has just learned he has terminal cancer. Then he loses his job. With no way to provide for his wife and son and his days running out quickly, Tommy and his friends Sherm and John decide on a desperate act. And everything goes wrong.

The book is incredibly moving in an emotional sense. The pace is fast, the turns unpredictable and the ending is very satisfying. You won't regret reading this one.

Keene takes a shot at another clichéd story type here. That is the desperate but good man finds out he's dying so he decides to rob a bank to leave something behind for his wife and kid. Pretty typical, but well executed with an interesting paranormal twist. Yet, what really stands out in this book is Keene's portrayal of a dying man living within a dying Pennsylvania manufacturing town. He adequately captures the feeling of desperation and of dying dreams. At times the story utilizes some very overused literary tricks, but in the end you feel the pain of the main character, no matter how stupid he is.

A surprisingly fast read with a melancholy, but highly effective, ending. The overuse of pop culture gets a little annoy and at times dulls the story telling, and some times the hip-hop lingo gets irritating, dog. The pros outweigh the cons, making them easy to look over. I found myself caring for the main character--something that made the ending that much more powerful. It's not monumental, but still a good novel. I recommend it.