Book 1 Down

As predicted, I wrapped The Rising last night.

I was thoroughly enjoying myself until I read a sentence pairing which drove me up the wall and seemed to bring all of the faults of the book to the forefront making my continued enjoyment a bit more difficult. I don't have the book with me so I can't relate exactly what it was but it was something along the lines of "A great eagle slammed into the glass, once a symbol of freedom and liberty, it was now a symbol of corruption and decay."

I rolled my eyes at that and through out the rest of the book, I noticed more poor word choices along those lines things which could have been cut back a bit by an editor.

A few other things that I didn't like were the pacing. At about page 150, the story picks up to such a degree that it doesn't stop and most of the nice touches of characterization which make the first parts of the story so enjoyable are kind of tossed out for numerous interchangeable nasty national guardsmen whose sole pleasures in life are raping and pillaging lead by a colonel who could have been made to be more menacing by fleshing him out a bit more. It would have been the perfect opportunity to paint him in a bit more sympathetic light to make his actions far more reprehensible.

The latter half of the book has some absolutely wonderful flourishes though, like the return to science facility which spawned the whole situation, the redemption of Frankie and the establishment of her humanity, the preacher Martin (who I feel becomes the strongest character in the book).

There is one thing which may annoy many readers in that the book doesn't end, but rather it just stops. I was absolutely fine with the ambiguity of the original end, but I also picked up City of the Dead (the book's sequel) and read the opening paragraphs to see what happened.

Overall, I enjoyed it. I liked the mythology, I liked two of the three main characters, there are some excellent set pieces and some neat ideas that are handled well. I'd have loved to had stronger characters from the National Guards and particularly their commander. I also would have liked about 50 more pages to break up the pacing problems.

New Book: Eric Side Steps

To avoid this turning into one book in 52 weeks I have set aside Tristam Shandy and have gone for the powerful cleansing of Brian Keene's The Rising.

I have always liked the Leisure Publishing Horror line. I feel it's very diverse with many different kinds of horror, from the super natural to the non-supernatural yet still horrific (see nearly everything by Jack Ketchum). They also have a tendency to reprint things which you can normally only find in specialist press in inexpensive mass market editions, something which I greatly appreciate because the thought of paying $40 for 100 pages of story is just a bit insane to me. This gives me and others the ability to read these great stories. I have a few issues with the series as well but I'll leave that for another time.

I was drawn to Brian Keene's The Rising not because I'm a fan of zombies or zombie fiction. Frankly, I think I'm a bit over zombies. Yes, they're neat and in the right hands can represent all kinds of modern and post-modern fears while also showing the strength of humanity is in the drive to survive. It is also great for a genre because we get to see people far worse off than us.

Schadenfreude as emotional comfort.

I picked it up because there was a great interview with the author in Cemetery Dance, a "quarterly" horror fiction publication. The author talked abit about his philosophy of horror and writing in general and it marked him as "one to keep an eye on" for future purchases. So when Dorchester publishing (who owns the Leisure line) ran a $1 sale, I picked up a few of his books, including the sequel to this book. Not having the original, I left it to the side.

The Rising is about the zombiepocalypse but thankfully not the shuffling dead brainless flesh eaters. Instead these reanimated corpses are brought to re-life by the consciousness of so far unnamed entities. We're given to believe that they're demons, but I think that they're actually bitter Angels.

The rules laid out are you die, you get possessed. When you're possessed the inhabitor gains access to your memories and therefore the possesor gets your skill sets. So if you knew how to fire a gun, the new undead you can fire a gun. However there is a scene where an undead baby is found in a baby seat but it can't get out of the straps because it didn't know how when it was alive. The hosts have a base set of skills as well, including knowledge of dead languages and the like but that's not well developed yet.

When turned, the zombies kill others, eat them, but the flesh is sublimated, not digested. They always make certain to leave the host bodies mobile so that the corpse can be reanimated and move around.

Even animals can become possessed. There's a great sequence early on in a Zoo where in a gang of stereotypes are dispatched by things like undead lions, anacondas, and such. Sadly, no zombie gorillas. There is also another sequence with a goldfish, which sadly made me think of Klaus from American Dad!

The writing is very breezy. I picked it up at lunch and started reading it on the train home and a bit before bed and i'm on page 129 of 321 (compared to page 25 of Tristam Shandy). There are moments of gore, but nothing really uncomfortable like in the works of Edward Lee who has made me queasy a few times.

I'm also pleasently surprised to find this isn't just a generic zombipocalypse novel (most of which reads like Fulci fan fic at best) but that there's an attempt to introduce a new mythology to the genre.

So far, I'm QUITE pleased and will probably wrap this book today or tomorrow.