In Brian Keene’s The Rising, and its sequel City of the Dead, the dead are coming back to life.  But these are not ordinary, brain lunching, flesh munching, zombies.  An interdimensional divide has opened involving experiments with particle accelerators and black holes, allowing demons to invade our reality.  These demons escape the distant depths and slip into the bodies of the departed.  The dead are demon possessed, making them intelligent, calculating, and cunning.  But the demons, lead by Ob, do not stop at possessing just deceased humans, they take over dead animals too.
 

The Rising concerns Jim Thurmond.  He is trapped in his bomb shelter in West Virginia while his dead, demon possessed neighbors roam his backyard trying to get their decaying hands on him.  Jim’s pregnant second wife is among the living dead.  It’s while he is contemplating what to do with the rest of his time that he receives a phone call from his young son, Danny;  Danny tells him his mom and stepdad are dead and he is trapped in the attic.  Danny lives in upstate New Jersey.  The Rising follows Jim’s trek across the post-apocalyptic landscape to save his son.  Along the way Jim teams with Martin, a preacher, Frankie, a prostitute, and Baker, one of the scientists responsible for opening the rift and creating Hell on Earth.  As if the zombies were not enough to contend with, a renegade band of National Guard troops under the direction of the lunatic Colonel Schow is on the prowl.  City of the Dead picks up with the survivors of The Rising fortified in a city skyscraper as Ob’s forces grow in hopes of extinguishing all life on Earth in order for the next wave of demon entities to be unleashed.
 
Keene’s two novels set a high mark for zombie literature (laugh if you want), and exemplify Keene as a talented and inventive writer (of horror or otherwise).  The Rising and City of the Dead are the best things to happen to the living dead since Romero’s film Day of the Dead.  This saga is filled with action, blood, brains, guts, and all manners of perversity.  Everything splatter punk should be.  The Rising is a sickly treat, but it’s in City of the Dead that Brian Keene knocks it out of the park.  From beginning to end, City is a tour de force that every horror fan should read.
 
The Rising  4 out of 5
City of the Dead  4.5 out of 5
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