City Of The Dead (Mass Market Paperback)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: more zombies, zombie army, other zombies, Brian Keene, Ramsey Towers, New York City (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this sequel to the Stoker-winning The Rising (2003), Keene ingeniously asks, if human corpses can be reanimated, why not dead dogs, rats, sparrows, goldfish, etc.? His other innovation is the news that the zombie swarm is inhabited by demons who are angry at God for trying to exile them in the Void. They want to get revenge by killing everything on Earth, and they are numerous, clever and indestructible enough to accomplish the task. Opposing the demon-zombies are a few living survivors, chiefly an ex-hooker, a young father and his little boy. Finding no shelter elsewhere, they wind up in a fortified Manhattan skyscraper, commanded by an old millionaire who's certain he can outlast any attack. Keene does a fine job keeping the mechanics of the siege clear, while switching viewpoints among his large cast of characters. He's also inventive in imagining ways the human body can be disassembled, with vivid descriptions of torn flesh and spraying fluids. After a while, though, the relentless dread becomes tiresome. Reading this book is like being trapped in a long, gory, unwinnable video game. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Description

Where can you go when the dead are everywhere? Cities have become overrun with legions of the dead, all of them intent on destroying what's left of the living. Trapped inside a fortified skyscraper, a handful of survivors prepare to make their last stand against an unstoppable, undying enemy. With every hour their chances diminish and their numbers dwindle, while the numbers of the dead can only rise. Because sooner or later, everything dies. And then it comes back, ready to kill --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 357 pages
• Publisher: Leisure Books (May 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0843954159
• ISBN-13: 978-0843954159
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (123 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #61,022 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #91 in

  Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Horror > Occult

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Satisfying & Exciting; Mondo on the Gore, August 5, 2005

By	A. Reid (NC, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars THE RISING, Part 2, June 29, 2005

By	Joshua Koppel (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Okay Sequel, Disappointing ending..Spoiler Review., September 27, 2005

By	Sushi Girl -Laura (Gainesville, Florida) - See all my reviews

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".