Dead Sea is another zombie novel from horror writer Brian Keene. It's quite different from his debut zombie novel, The Rising, in that it really puts a lot of focus on the characters and not just the violence. The body count is much lower in this one, but the story is much better. I could have done without the author's constant anti-religion injections, though. With the way it ends, this book is only worth reading if you can tolerate disappointment.
The lead character in this book is a gay black man named Lamar Reed who winds up saving a couple of young children from a nearby neighborhood. They fight their way out of a burning city and end up getting on board an old Navy ship that had been turned into a museum. A handful of other survivors also get on board, and this is where the majority of the story unfolds. One might think they'd be safe from the zombies out on the open water, but they still may need protection from each other.
I thought the idea of making the main character be gay put an interesting twist on the story because the two children he saved began to look at him as a father figure. Lamar Reed is like the ultimate reluctant hero for many reasons, including his total lack of experience when it came to children. The author populated the boat with a large variety of characters and personality types, so there was a lot of interpersonal conflict between some of the people on board. It made for interesting reading, and I liked how it went into the social impact of survival among strangers.
One of the characters on board is a retired college professor, and the author uses him as a means of discussing Joseph Campbell's writings on character archetypes. While it is all a little self-serving and overly explanatory, it does play into the story because the professor helps to explain to Lamar what he is going through and the role he must take on as the protector of those children. On a side note, I am quite familiar with Campbell's work and encourage anyone to look into his material on the subject. You'll appreciate the stories in books and movies even more once you understand them.
This book is quite violent, but nowhere near the same amount of carnage that splattered over each page of The Rising. Instead of mindlessly slaughtering dozens of random people, the author takes the time to develop each character so that their death or survival makes more of an impact on the reader. I really liked that injection of personality and it's often the thing most lacking in horror stories.
This is my second novel from Brian Keene and I am starting to notice a disturbing trend in his bad, or rather lack of, endings. I quit reading Stephen King because so many of his books end without actually ending, such as Cell or The Long Walk. This novel, just like The Rising, leaves you hanging. I hate it when authors do their readers this way. Hate it! I bought several of Keene's novels used on eBay and am reading another, Ghoul, right now. If it also fails to end, I won't be reading any more.
I don't know why editors think this sort of thing should even be tolerable. Concluding the story is an important and necessary aspect of storytelling. Don't give me that ‘all about the journey' BS, either. It's just a bunch of conflict with no resolution. Otherwise, it would have been spectacular, but since the author decided to be lazy with the ending it brought down the whole damn thing. I loved every page of Dead Sea right up until the last one, and then I felt cheated. It's not even cleverly ambiguous - it's just incomplete.
With zombies taking over the cities, a group of humans escapes the carnage by taking a small Coast Guard ship out to sea, but theres no getting away--...More at HotBookSale
With zombies taking over the cities, a group of humans escapes the carnage by taking a small Coast Guard ship out to sea, but theres no getting away--...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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