Scan barcode
A review by itsalladeepend
City of the Dead: Author's Preferred Edition by Brian Keene
2.0
City of the Dead is the follow up to The Rising and the story picks up exactly where the first book ends, this is despite apparently being a follow up that was never planned but rather the result of growing demand from publishers and fans.
The most frustrating aspect of City of the Dead is, much like The Rising, at its core it has a good idea for a story but it's fumbled in the execution.
The Rising introduced a slightly different Earth where thanks to a machine not unlike the Large Hadron Collider the barrier between Earth's dimension and another realm weakens unleashing malevolent spirits called the Siqqusim, biblical demons cast into the void by God. The Siqqusim possess the bodies of the dead whilst retaining the memories of the dead they possess.
This is the setting for the world of The Rising and the story both features the characters of the first book and introduces several more as they fight to survive in the nightmare they find themselves in.
City of the Dead definitely has a few similarities with Romero's Land of the Dead which also features a high rise where survivors live ruled over by an unhinged member of the wealthy elite but really its main problems are a lack of internal logic which just becomes more and more grating as the story progresses.
The siqquisim possess the dead but also eat the living which is somewhat paradoxical, this is handwaved by saying they leave bodies intact and complicated further by handwaving that they use magic to absorb energy from what they eat due to inhabiting a dead corpse with no functioning digestive system. The siqquisim apparently possess and eat the dead to mock God and make way for other demons that possess plants.
The Siqquisim also possess dead animals, who can speak once they're possessed.
When a host of the Siqquisim is killed the demon goes back to the void and waits to possess a new host but they apparently have no control over which host they possess, so they could be a shark or a former army general.
With all this incoherence and handwaving going on the bones of a pretty good story just get buried.
No doubt some would defend this rather sloppy approach by saying that Keene's books are B-movie grindhouse horror pulp fiction and aren't meant to be high literature, aren't meant to be subject to any sort of criticism, but that's a flimsy defence. It doesn't matter what you're writing fiction wise it has to work narratively and obey it's own internal logic and handwaving is just lazy writing.
The most frustrating aspect of City of the Dead is, much like The Rising, at its core it has a good idea for a story but it's fumbled in the execution.
The Rising introduced a slightly different Earth where thanks to a machine not unlike the Large Hadron Collider the barrier between Earth's dimension and another realm weakens unleashing malevolent spirits called the Siqqusim, biblical demons cast into the void by God. The Siqqusim possess the bodies of the dead whilst retaining the memories of the dead they possess.
This is the setting for the world of The Rising and the story both features the characters of the first book and introduces several more as they fight to survive in the nightmare they find themselves in.
City of the Dead definitely has a few similarities with Romero's Land of the Dead which also features a high rise where survivors live ruled over by an unhinged member of the wealthy elite but really its main problems are a lack of internal logic which just becomes more and more grating as the story progresses.
The siqquisim possess the dead but also eat the living which is somewhat paradoxical, this is handwaved by saying they leave bodies intact and complicated further by handwaving that they use magic to absorb energy from what they eat due to inhabiting a dead corpse with no functioning digestive system. The siqquisim apparently possess and eat the dead to mock God and make way for other demons that possess plants.
The Siqquisim also possess dead animals, who can speak once they're possessed.
When a host of the Siqquisim is killed the demon goes back to the void and waits to possess a new host but they apparently have no control over which host they possess, so they could be a shark or a former army general.
With all this incoherence and handwaving going on the bones of a pretty good story just get buried.
No doubt some would defend this rather sloppy approach by saying that Keene's books are B-movie grindhouse horror pulp fiction and aren't meant to be high literature, aren't meant to be subject to any sort of criticism, but that's a flimsy defence. It doesn't matter what you're writing fiction wise it has to work narratively and obey it's own internal logic and handwaving is just lazy writing.