Keene has done a superb job with this one. I found it difficult to put down and was drawn further in with the turn of every page. I have truely enjoyed reading The Rising and found it to not only be very thrilling but very intense.

I liked this book. I'm more of a fan of mindless zombies. If zombies talk, by definition they'r not really zombies, but still these were some pretty menacing undead dudes. Ob was great as the Zombie leader, and I loved the ending that wasn't really an ending. Left a lot of questions, but in a good way. The dialogue was a little corny, and it tried too hard in a couple of spots, but not enough to make me put the book down. Worth the money if you're into the undead.

This had the potential to be a really great book, but fell way short. A few things that annoyed me follow:

1.) Misspelling of common words (i.e., "Viet Nam" and "HumVee"),
2.) A pair of silver bars on each shoulder of an Army officer indicates the rank of Captain, not "second lieutenant" (that would be a single brass bar),
3.) The female anti-hero is rather despicable, and murders two different men after first luring them with the promise of sex, yet is consistantly portrayed in a "positive" light,
4.) Not one, but TWO "token retards" which add nothing to the story (but an additional 30 pages of filler),
5.) At the beginning of the story, the depressed protagonist is holed up in a bunker when he gets a call on his cellphone -- which he refused to answer, thinking it might be a zombie. Turns out it is his young son who lives hundreds of miles away, who leaves a message saying that he's hiding in the attic and needs help. Just after hearing the message, the battery goes dead. This motivates the protagonist to leave the bunker and attempt a cross-country roadtrip, all the while reminising about how his son used to tell him, "I luv U more than infinity" over and over and over again,
6.) Many, many unlikely coincidences and miraculous strings of luck save the main characters from certain doom throughout the book,
7.) Lots of unnecessary detail regarding numerous gratuitous rape scenes . . . there's even a "golden shower." Pretty much every female depicted in the book ends up gang raped,
8.) The book skips around between characters in a difficult to follow manner, and many times it seemed as if the author just rushed through writing a scene without taking the time to develop things further,
9.) And for the finale, just as the protagonist enters the house where his son should be, there is a scream and gunshots, and dozens of zombies begin advancing towards his two companions in the car outside (who abandon their vehicle to help the protagonist) then . . . that's it. Last page.

"A-ha!" smirks Keene, "I COMPEL you to purchase my next book!" That was a cheap trick that I thought went out of style with the "cliffhanger" movies from the 1930s. It violates the implied contract an author makes with his readers, in which the book is guaranteed to have at least some semblence of a conclusion -- even trilogies have a "pause" between books. I felt like Keene just tried to "play me like a sucker." Well, get this, Brian -- I'm NOT buying your next book. Not only that, but I didn't even buy my copy of "The Rising" -- I got it from the library. HA!

Anyhow, aside from the number of complaints listed above, this was an entertaining book to read. Unlike many authors, Keene has a decent familiarity with firearms, and the scenes of graphic violence were realistic without going "over the top." Furthermore, I really liked the premise of demons taking over the bodies of not only recently dead people, but dogs, birds, livestock, wild animals, and even a tropical fish! Zombie purists will HATE that you don't automatically become "infected" after being bitten, and will GNASH THEIR TEETH over the very idea of talking zombies who not only use tools, but can fire guns, drive cars, and plan ambushes. Demon premise works well -- far more plausable than "chemical spill" or "alien asteroid" or "we have NO IDEA what's going on."

This was a fun book to read, but be advised that the author decided to gyp the reader by leaving us hanging at the end. Not cool.

This is the best zombie novel I have read in a long time. Being a fan of the living dead genre in books and movies I am surprised it took me so long to read this one. A differant take on the zombie makes this one stand out. It comes across more as a possession. These are not the Romero zombies though. They run, they talk, and they are intelligent. Also, the zombie infection is not limited to humans. The animals have fallen too. The short version of this story has a man who was living in a bomb shelter trying to get across country to save his young son whom he believes is still alive. Though you learn a bit about the demon/zombies, there are many questions left unanswered, including a way for humanity to survive. The ending was also a little dark. This is not a perfect book, but it was a fine read and I recommend it. I will also be picking up the sequel City of the Dead.

Very adult, shockingly brutal - sometimes unnecessarily so. It was a good enough story, reads quickly, and is exciting enough to be a page-turner. I actually went in with pretty low expectations and was pleasantly surprised for the most part. I liked the characters more than I thought I would, but not quite enough to care about them when they were killed in horrible ways. Keane seems interested in taking every act of violence to the absolute extreme, but his ideas and plot devices seem pretty rehashed. In almost every new scene, and with every new character, I was saying to myself "That sounds a lot like The Stand" or "That's pretty much the same character as in Day of the Dead". And there's just no way to take the phrase "zombie squirrel" seriously. Worth reading if you're a serious zombie fan, but don't give to your kids.