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

Ed's Mini Book Review - The Morningstar Strain: Thunder and Ashes

Continuing with my zombie-fest mood of late, I decided to read book two of The Morningstar Strain series, Thunder and Ashes.

For some background on the story, Morningstar is the name of a uber-fast spreading virus that turns you into a feral, ultra-violent, disease carrier along the lines of those infected by The Rage Virus in the 28 Days Later film. The added twist here is that after you die, you rise from the dead like your run-of-the-mill zombie from the Romero flicks.

This book picks up where the last one left off, following two groups trying to meet at a research facility in Omaha. The first group contains Dr. Ana Demillio who was studying the virus at the time of the outbreak and subsequent pandemic. The other group is a group of Army soldiers who are headed by a friend of the doctor, General Sherman. Sherman is travelling from the West Coast and Dr. Demillio is travelling from the East Coast all the while total chaos is all around them.

This book is more of a survival horror book than a zombie book. The main threats are not the undead, but the survivors of the initial pandemic and to what depths have they stooped to survive in a law-less, dangerous world. What I liked about this installment of the series is that it could have easily focused on the horrible things that people do to survive and I have read too many survival horror books that went down that road but this one didn't. It kept it classy so to speak and focused on the story and driving it forward. On the flip side, I felt that some of the character development was weak and even at points, I would struggle to remember who was who, especially with the Army group.

All-in-all, a good entry in the series and I look forward to the next book.

B+