Dead Sea

I read Dead Sea right after The Rising. I must say the intrinsic qualities of Dead Sea were so much higher that it almost felt like Dead Sea had been written by another author who seems to have gained in maturity, exploring darker sides of the mankind's psychology. The focus is no longer so much on raw physical violence and gore than on the intimate distress of "everyday life people".Dead Sea is the story of a group of people, among whom some characters are quite peculiar and very far from the mainstream -which makes the plot even more interesting- who happen to "tumble" onto one another in the aftermath of a behemoth city fire, fleeing the danger while simultaneously trying to evade the plague of the living deads. They make it to the sea, where they embark on a ship. The story takes us onboard too and have us share the life and struggle of the survivors.What is so remarkable in this book is the quality of the description of the characters' personalities and their trains of thoughts. Unlike what he did in his previous books, the author apparently decided to give a much stronger focus onto the lives and doubts and wishes and, overall, what makes people's characters so subtle and fragile at the same time. With all of their flaws and weaknesses, these survivors really are attaching and credible people, and one can't help but empathize with the core group of unfortunate chaps. Thanks largely to the quality of their description by the author, those people are just like us, far from perfect. That makes the story all the more interesting as the reader can relate to them easily.Also, death is everywhere, and credible too, as it strikes people in the very random way we are accustomed to in real life. Death spares no one: women and men, heroes and villains, kids and elders, blacks and whites, the poor and the rich... Everybody is equal in front of death. Another balanced and credible view of the world which makes the book so interesting.There is also a strong, underlying, Romero-like criticism of many of the values that we, as a society, have established as supreme in our daily life. Religion, materialism, the military, politics, media, the police etc. do not provide any efficient material, or psychological, or ethical help in fighting a plague that is of such a magnitude. Question is: when everything falls apart around you at once, what makes you fight? Basically, the book is really about the ultimate, desperate, irreversible end of the world as we know it and how people could react in the turmoil. The evil disease is global, cureless, merciless, transmissible from species to species, mutating and adaptive. A real nightmare. Boy, I would hate to find myself living in such a world...But the author also makes us question: what use is mankind's intimate self-preservation reflex when there is absolutely no more hope around? What makes us hope? What is hope? I have personally loved the fact that the book had me think about these things.The icing on the cake is probably the excellent book ending, which leaves room to the reader for some personal interpretation. Depending on your mind, mood or personality, you may be drawn to see the light at the end of the tunnel or, on the contrary, find yourself in a bottomless pit, with absolutely no hope in sight.A very good book indeed.

Having already read 'The Rising' and 'City of the Dead', 'Dead Sea' was quite a let down. If I had read this book first, I might have enjoyed it more than I did.In 'Dead Sea', Keene uses the traditional type of zombies that George Romero first gave us. The slow moving, not really thinking, very hungry type of zombie. Once again we start off with almost the whole world taken over by zombies already. This time though, Keene takes a minute to fill us in on how it began though which was quite interesting, but nothing really new. To become a zombie in this book you have to have bodily fluid contact. Such as biting, or blood being splattered in your eyes or an open wound, or even having sex with a zombie. Not saying that happens, but it's just a possibility. Though if you die a natural cause or were already dead before the outbreak, you won't become a zombie.Now I liked `Dead Sea'. I really did. I think if I had read it before `The Rising' or `City of the Dead', then I might have liked it more than I did. But this time around there just doesn't seem like a lot of action or much to keep me interested. The book starts off really good and even makes me think of the book `I Am Legend' since the main character, Lamar, is alone in his house a little bit before and after his roommate. Boarded up while secretly looking outside. Trying to live a normal live within a hellish nightmare. When Lamar has to make a break for it, it gets even better. Running from slow shuffling zombies sounds pretty easy I would think. But not so much when you are in city filled with smoke because it's burning down. Keene's detail during this part of the book is pretty good. I felt like I was there with a torn shirt around my face, wet with water to help prevent inhaling all the smoke around me. Running through thin alleyways trying to get away from the thousands upon thousands of zombies slowly moving towards me.And that's about it for me. That was the best part of the book. When Lamar and company arrived at the boat, I was out of breath from all the action. Once `we' got on the boat I felt like I just stepped onto the `WTF just happened to this story' cruise. It was rough getting through most of the boat part. We were introduced to A LOT of characters and got a little back-story on each one. I'm guessing to make us `feel' for these people when they get killed later. I really didn't give a crap for most of them until we were down to a few because I could actually remember who was who.I really can't tell what Keene was thinking though through this book. Once again it seems like he has a ton of ideas flying through his head while he's writing, to only come up short with them. It almost felt like, at the end, he was kind of pissed at where he went with his story and instead of changing it, he decided to just end it without giving the reader much of an ending to continue with in another book or at least in their imaginations.And one last thing, I think Keene has a great imagination. But there was this one part close to the end (I'm not going to spoil anything) where I IMMEDIATELY said to myself, "Duh... this is going on"...and of course it was going on because we've all seen it a million times. I then asked a friend what he would think if he saw this going on and he said the same thing as me...lol. I couldn't believe Keene did that because, to me, usually his main character is pretty smart and doesn't fall for the stupid crap that happens in movies all the time. It was really lame and disappointing.But like I said... I liked this book. It was an OK read. Just make sure if you are going to read it, to please read it before `The Rising' and `City of the Dead'.P.S. I didn't like that Keene referenced one of the main characters from 'The Rising' and 'City of the Dead'. Pretty black girl with track marks on her arms with the name of Frankie. Wow. Come on Keene...don't give a nod to your own books man... lol. Now if the book had been based on a completely different character in a different part of the world in the same 'world' as 'The Rising', then yeah... that would've been cool. Just my opinion.

Any zombie-fiction fan worth their salt will be familiar with Brian Keene, the Bram Stoker award-winning author of The Rising. Those people would also know that the man's prolific output (often 3 or 4 novels a year) makes it very hard to keep up with all of his work. This may be why one particular entry of Keene's backlist is often overlooked in favour of his more seminal works, Ghoul and The Rising (along with its sequel City of the Dead). The novel I am referring to is Dead Sea.Set in a different world to that of The Rising's demon-possessed zombies, Dead Sea features the more traditional Romero-esque undead; shambling hordes of rotting corpses. This may be unoriginal to some, but a big plus for many that dislike the modern `sprinting zombie'. However, despite a nod to tradition, Keene adds a unique twist to the subgenre by good use of setting.The story begins with Lamar, a gay, black man, fleeing a burning city full of the dead. Along the way he picks up two lost, yet plucky, children and finds his way to the docks. There he manages to board an ex-navy cutter, the USS Spratling, and sets sail along with a handful of other survivors.The premise of being stuck aboard a ship during a zombie holocaust may not be entirely original (The Morningstar Strain comes to mind), but Keene creates a world all his own through his excellent cast of characters. Like pretty much all of Keene's work, we are given people to root for and people to hate. The protagonist is realistic and flawed, while the antagonists are normal people that react in negative and selfish ways under stress. We can see bits of ourselves in all the characters that Keene creates, and in this regard he is very much like Stephen King at his best. So confident is the author in his characters that he even has one person discuss `Hero Archetypes' and their impact on narratives. The self-referential piece of dialogue is fun and interesting but also gives us an insight into just how well Keene understands his craft.With so many books to choose from, many will opt to read Brian Keene's better known works, and perhaps that makes sense, but I would strongly suggest giving this one a try, because it may just be one of his very best. The ending in particular is very strong and left me ruminating on it for days afterwards.So if you like your zombies slow and rotting, this is the book for you.

This is the story of Lamar Reed; a man fighting for survival when a strange new virus nicknamed "Hamelin's Revenge" infects humans from rats and causes them to become the walking dead.Lamar battles his way out of downtown Baltimore trying to keep himself from being eaten by the living dead. He is joined by a young boy and girl, Malik and Tasha who have lost their mum to the dead.They have an idea to make it to the Baltimore waterfront and marina to get on a boat to escape the dead hoards in the sea. On arrival at the waterfront they join a band of refugees aboard the USCGC Spratling, an old museum coastguard cutter that is still very sea worthy and part operational. What follows is a scary, exciting zombie story based mainly at sea.I have to say of all the zombie books I have read; this has got to be one of my favourites. Although it begins with what seems to be a tried and tested unoriginal zombie novel formula, it suddenly veers off and becomes a very original, refreshing take on a zombie apocalypse. I found it much thought provoking especially with the added dimension of the zombie virus "jumping" to other animal species and the additional horror this creates. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Absolutely brilliant and if you are a fan of the zombie genre you simply cannot miss this book!

I found myself enjoying this series once I got the fact that these were zombies but possessed bodies. I hate it when zombies do any more than shuffle in large packs but these things drove and used weapons and tactics but that is because they are NOT just mindless virus victims, they are some sort of old type of gods or angels hell bent on the destruction of earth or man or something. Vague i know but it was a while ago when I read it.If you do read and enjoy it then i would recommend you seek or Dark Hollow by the same writer, it is pretty messed up.

This is the third Keene book after The Rising and City of the Dead that I have read and it was highly enjoyable. It is so fast paced that you rarely have time to recover from one bit of action before something else happens. In fact the first part of the book is virtually one big chase scene, before the charactors reach a ship and possible safety. However as always with Keene, it isnt long before it all goes to pot!Highly recommended for all horror fans.

I have never read a zombie book before and now I am not sure why that is.After the first few pages I was beginning to regret purchasing this book however I carried on reading and am so glad I did. It was actually hard to put it down. The characters are all excellent and the story line had me gripped.I would recommend this book to those who wouldn't normally read this genre because it is so well written.