Book 34 Dead Sea by Brian Keene

Hello All! Please forgive me for not keeping up with my posts. I have temporarily drifted away from my goal of 100 books to read in 2010. My love of cross stitching kind of got in the way...plus the fact I couldn't actually latch onto a book that would cleanse my fiction palette. Alas, so much time was lost...BUT I have found an AMAZING author who has cleaned the slate for me, and I am hungry for more!!

Brian Keene..what can I say...but that he is an amazing author. I have seen many of his books come to my mailbox by way of the Horror Book Club I subscribe to (Thank you Dorchester!). I glanced at them and thought, I'll get to him eventually. Man am I a DOPE.

Mr. Keene, in Dead Sea pulls out all the stops in this zombie apocalypse novel. It is not your typical zombie story...he adds some scientific aspects along with the humanity and the gore...god the gore!!! Every word on the pages brought a HUGE smile to my face. I mean really who doesn't love a good zombie munching gore fest!

Dead Sea is about a young gay black man named Lamar Reed, who is struggling to survive after being laid off from his job at the Ford plant. That is, until the rats come out of the sewers and start attacking people, not just any rats...dead rats...with innards hanging out, and limbs missing. They are the undead rats, that start attacking people and transferring "Hamelin's Revenge" (so it is named in the book, after the story of the Pied Piper). A disease which kills the host and turns them into the living dead, who feed on ANYTHING living.

Now don't think this disease is transferred only to humans, it seems this zombie plague only affects some species-cows not horses, dogs but not cats, and so on and so forth. Definitely different from the zombies I'm used to...but yet totally refreshing.

Lamar struggles to survive, lurking in alleyways to avoid the afflicted, and finds two young children-Tasha and Malik-who are also struggling to survive. They work together to avoid getting munched on by the undead.

I can't tell to much more, as it will give to much away...but trust me...this book is an absolute roller coaster ride! Brian Keene has a great "literary eye" and explains the zombies and gore beautifully. I mean what a work of art...Lamar is hiding in a dark alley when he sees a human (not yet afflicted) walking by holding his stomach together with his hands. He is in a daze, blood oozing between his fingers..Lamar watches him pass and then notices a zombie child following him eating his intestine. God damn is that poetic!

Read further and you have all sorts of innards, rotting corpses, skin stripped from bones, empty eye sockets and lots, no tons...of blood. It makes this horror fanatic smile a happy smile, and sleep well at night. Kind of like my lullaby...

For those of you without a weak stomach, I would definitely say pick this one up! It is definitely a treasure! I am going now to search my bookshelves for his other books. They are now the top of my "To be read" pile.

Till next time everyone!