Ed's Mini Book Review - The Rising by Brian Keene

Another recommended book in my search for more Survival Horror, or Zombie Books if you'd rather refer to them as that. And this one comes highly recommended at that from a friend that has read an insane amount of survival horror.

My take is that I don't know what my friend was thinking. He's turned me on to some excellent survival horror stuff but this book doesn't fall into that category. Some others he put me on to, Day by Day Armageddon for instance, were very good but this one, which as little different bend to the zombies and how they come into being, falls flat with repetitive and gratuitous scenes and a real let down of an ending.

It goes a little something like this. Typical survival horror with zombies rising and noshing on whoever is around. Trick is that these undead are actually possessed by demons who want to nibble a bit on you, just until you die but damage the whole body so that another demon can swoop in and posses the newly dead, and partially eaten corpse.

Follow so far? Good.

The story follows a few characters but the main one is Jim, traveling from Virginia to New Jersey to rescue his son. From that most noble of causes we get to see the dark side of humanity, when society breaks down and we are left to fend for ourselves. Now, this is nothing new in the survival horror genre and I think that is a big problem with this book. There is so much time devoted to the evils that are done, by humans to other humans, and repetitive at that, the story seems to spin its tires for long stretches. Add to it that if you've read any other survival stories, this theme has been done over and over again and after the fourth or fifth rape scene or the umpteenth soldier smashing someones face with a rifle butt, you are bored out of your skull. Many times reading this book I wanted to shout "All right already, we get it already, people are just as dangerous as the monsters!".

I actually put this book down for about six months and picked it up again when I was in the mood for some zombie stuff and fought my way to finish it. I thought of picking up the sequel, City of the Dead, but read some reviews that said that this book was better so I'll skip it, which it my recommendation for this book, skip it.

My Grade: C-

LL