City of the Dead
By Brian Keene
Leisure Books, 2005
ISBN 0-8439-5415-9

Although this book is the sequel to Keene’s book The Rising, I have not read the earlier book. Thankfully this book stands quite well by itself. There is enough back-story covered within City of the Dead to allow you to go straight into this book, whilst there is not so much that it would be repetitive if you have read The Rising.

Keene has taken a new and most interesting twist on the zombie story and actually addressed the supernatural cause that so many authors fail to tackle or dance around. And a good supernatural cause he has come up with. I will not spoil it for those who have not read The Rising or one of the spoilers that is out there. Suffice to say it is clever and well considered.
This book is graphic and gruesome to the extreme, so it will not suit some. Yet I did not find it inappropriate or merely done for shock value. Rather it is an inherent part of the story and the way Keene tells it.

One of the cover quotes describes Keene as the next Stephen King. I am not sure about this and it seems a large stretch, no matter how effective this book might be. I did not find myself caring about the survival of Keene’s main characters to the same extent as in some of King’s books. In fact I noticed this as I was reading it. Also the book is not very surprising in the directions it takes. I hate to say this but it almost seems as if Keene’s creativity ended with the great development of the zombie idea and he had little left for the storyline within the book itself. So many things were predictable and that was a shame.

I did reasonably enjoy this book, despite its faults. The novelty of initial idea carries you through, just to see how it turns out. IS it worth a read? Yes, I think so. I think I will go back and read The Rising to see how it starts. The ending of the book seems to make a sequel difficult, but you never know.