Zombies, part 3, but not really . . .

books:


	• Dead Sea Brian Keene Leisure, 2007 - 337 pages average customer review:based on 57 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Excellent Zombie Fun!!!

Blood and Rain
Blood for the Masses

Dead Sea
By
Brian Keene

Reviewed By
B.L.Morgan

5 Stars

Brian Keene is rapidly becoming one of my favorite horror authors. He writes fast moving horrific gross-outs that actually make you care a bit about the characters too. That's not easy to do.

This one starts a little bit after a zombie outbreak and has a gay man hiding in his apartment just trying to survive.

I'm not going to go into the plot because I don't want to spoil any of the surprises. There of course if a fight for survival and he is forced to leave the comforts of his apartment and ends up with some others out on the sea where things appear to be OK. At least for a little while. One of the things that I particularly liked was that Keene turned some stereotypes on their heads. I'm not going to detail how he did that or I'd ruin some good surprises for you.

I highly recommend Dead Sea. It's gruesome, fast-paced, has a lot of originality to it. The back cover blurb states that "Brian Keene is the next Stephen King." He definitely has enough talent to come close to being exactly that.

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Zombies, part 3, but not really . . .

I read the first two Keene "zombie" books, The Rising and City of the Dead (and loved them) and in the mean time had picked up The Conqueror Worms and Dead Sea. I figured I would take a break from zombies and read about killer worms but decided to just read the first few pages of Dead Sea. I read the first few lines and was totally hooked. Brian Keene can write!

These are the zombies I am used to. Told in the first person, the main character, Lamar, starts the story and doesn't stop for a breath for at least 100 pages.

For those reviewers who don't like the Keene style of zombie, these are in the mold of the Romero "Dead" zombies. I liked the new storyline, the characters and the writing style. I could not have been happier.

So far, my favorite Brian Keene read.

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Funny yes disappoint

i liked the book, except the ending, brian keene some how seems to always disappoint me at the end of the books.

Great Zombies, but no Ob

After reading several of Keene's novels, I've discovered that he really likes 2 things... Zombies and ending the world. Many thought that this was the third in the Zombie series, following "The Rising" and "City of the Dead." It would make sense for this to be the third installment in the series, however it is not. If you go into this book expecting "The Rising 3" you will be sorely disappointed. These are not the same zombies as in the other two books, rather than the legions of Undead who are tool using, weapon wielding, trap setting demons lead by Ob... these are your standard Romero style Zombies, slow and dimwitted. This is where so many of the readers get upset... if you expect Ob's minions, they aren't here.

What this book DOES have that makes it a wonderful book is sympathetic characters who are giving it 100% to survive. Lamar is a young gay black man who has fought against the stereotypes his entire life... well when the world begins falling apart due to "Hamlin's Revenge" he locks himself away in his small home in Baltimore. A fire is what gets him out of his hidey-hole and on the run... when all of Baltimore is going up in flames, and there is no one to put it out... where do you run too? I liked Keene's addition of the two children in this novel. The idea of trying to run and protect two little ones along the way is even more unnerving than just running for yourself, or with a few other adults who should be able to run just as well as you. Some of the characters introduced later in the book are stereotypes... but after the conversation with the professor and the thoughts running through Lamar's head... you find yourself wondering if they needed to be stereotypes. Is that just showing how we think?

Other reviewers have mentioned the feeling of inevitability in this novel. I don't know if that is there if this is your first Keene book. Perhaps it is only there for those of us who have read so many of his other books that we know where he will take us. I really didn't have a problem with knowing where the story was going to end up... as I said in the beginning, Keene loves to end the world, and he loves Zombies. All in all I found this to be a very enjoyable read... gore by the truckload, nasty zombies, survivors gone a bit loony, good people trying to survive, and a complete lack of nakedness and random sexual encounters (quite a relief after reading a few other horror authors). I would have to say that this was my favorite of the three Zombie novels.

**Random Note - One of the most irritating things that happens in this book, which REALLY threw me for a loop, is when Keene mentions Frankie and the Zoo incident in this book. I was very confused and angry since this was obviously a completely different world than the one that Frankie and Jim lived in... otherwise these Zombies should have been under Ob's rule, which they weren't. I am not sure why he added that in, but it was irritating.**

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