Rating: 
Summary: Zombies and Junkies and Soldiers...Oh My!!!
Review: This book can be summed up in one word - AWESOME!!! I was hooked from the first page. However, I do hope that,as another reviewer stated, there is a sequel to this story. I was so caught up in the struggle between the living and the undead, good vs evil that towards the end - my stomach was in knots. And then.....well, you'll have to read it yourself. Other than the way it ended - this novel was extremely well. Brian Keene definitely joins the ranks of my favorite horror authors.
Rating:
Summary: Good old fashioned zombie fun
Review: I enjoy reading all types of horror stories, but I have always had a special place in my heart for apocalyptic tales. I don't know what it is about these sorts of yarns, but give me a disastrous end of the world scenario along with a band of disparate and desperate survivors attempting to eke out an existence in a devastated world and I am there. I've probably read Stephen King's "The Stand" at least four times, along with "On the Beach," "Earth Abides," "Swan Song," and many, many more stories concerning the end of humanity. The method of destruction doesn't make much of a difference in whether I will read the story, either. Give me nuclear bombs raining down from the heavens, killer viruses or related plagues, or out of control technology, and I'm happy. Brian Keene took a slightly different tack with his horror novel "The Rising." Instead of vaporizing cities with megaton yield weapons or employing a killer flu, he decided good old-fashioned zombies would do the trick. Yep, the world as we know it doesn't go out with a bang in Keene's book; it goes out with chomp, a chew, and a swallow. "The Rising" is light years ahead of the other apocalyptic zombie book I read a couple of years ago, Candace Caponegro's "The Breeze Horror."We learn quickly that the world went insane when some scientists working in one of those secret weapons laboratories experimented with a new particle accelerator. Whoops. The experiment had all sorts of important functions, at least on paper, but warnings that strange incidents could take place went largely ignored by the technicians involved in the project. When reports began surfacing about the recently dead suddenly reanimating and wreaking havoc, people wrote it off as nonsense. Predicatably, the problem soon proved horribly true, resulting in escalating and ever widening scenes of violent death at the hands of the hungry undead. Society went under with astonishing speed as the flesheaters promptly attacked any living creature within reach, thereby exponentially increasing their own numbers while achieving a comparative decrease in human numbers. Electric power, cell phones, the Internet, the government, and radio and television stations began to fail in various parts of the country as the zombies rampaged. This further isolated survivors, although a few stalwart souls doggedly hang on in the face of total insanity. One of these survivors is Jim Thurmond, a construction worker living in West Virginia. Hiding away in a bomb shelter he constructed in case the world ended from Y2K, Thurmond now uses it to hold off packs of roving beasties, one of them his recently deceased second wife. Jim laments his condition, sick to the very marrow of his being that he will never again see Danny, his son from his first marriage. Thurmond's son lives in far off New Jersey, a long trip under normal circumstances but now seemingly unreachable considering current affairs. Then something amazing happens that sends Jim off on a quest fraught with peril: his nearly dead cell phone rings with a message from his son. Danny whispers into the phone that things are bad where he is at but that he and his mother are currently hiding from the zombies. Thurmond resolves to leave that very minute in order to rescue his son. Just getting out of the bomb shelter presents a host of gruesome problems, problems requiring Jim to commit violence against his former neighbors and even his reanimated wife. Thurmond learns a few other things too, namely that the zombies he encounters do not resemble the shambling creatures from horror movies. The undead in this world possess the ability to think, drive cars, use weapons, and set traps for the living. New Jersey looks further and further away with every passing second. Other poor souls wander through the deteriorating cities and countryside of the United States. Thurmond meets Martin, an elderly black minister, soon after he leaves his house. The two join forces to find Danny and soon run into plenty of life threatening situations, everything from packs of roving zombies to backwoods cannibals seeking some extra food to undead wildlife. At the same time, Frankie, a down on her luck heroin user and woman of the night who narrowly escapes disaster in the Baltimore Zoo also begins a trek out of the cities and into the country. We also keep tabs on one of the scientists in charge of the particle accelerator as he too seeks his destiny in a world full of the undead. You know all of these people will come together at some point in the novel; seeing how Keene pulls it off is the fun part. The conclusion to the story delivers plenty of gory violence, but also gives us an ending that raises more questions than answers. Keene's story is one of the few mass-market horror paperbacks I have read in the past few years that makes you think after you finish the book. Several scenes of contrived coincidences, a bit of annoyance concerning Thurmond's robot-like determination to save his son, and a few characters who could have benefited from some better development isn't enough to hurt this book in the least. There is plenty of heavy gore, mach speed pacing, and an imaginative plot that doesn't give you all the answers. Even better, Keene used his apocalyptic tale as a vehicle by juxtaposing unconditional love and hope with death and destruction. "The Rising" is a good tale well told, although if the author plans a sequel perhaps he should reconsider. The conclusion is more powerful left just as it is, something a follow up novel would ruin.
Rating: 
Summary: A disappointment
Review: After reading all the glowing reviews on this page I thought I was in for a real treat. Instead I got a plodding, dull, lackluster waste of time. The characters might as well have been stick figures, from the stereotypical hillbilly murderers to the stereotypical bloodthirsty military left-overs. The whole thing ham-handedly staggers to an unsatisfying non-climax that was clearly slapped together to sucker you in to buying the sequel. Frankly I don't care enough about the characters to buy the sequel only to find out if it ended the way it properly should have. If I could give this book less than one star, I would. By all means, save your money and go out and get your hands on "The Dead" by Mark Rogers. It is everything this book was not - in other words, a great read.
Rating: 
Summary: A Great New Voice in Horror
Review: The Rising might very well be the best zombie story in ages. Not only is it scary and gruesome, it is also skillfully written and emotionally striking. This is the very stuff horror is made of. Brian Keene might very well be our answer to all those long years of bad horror. Jim is trapped in his bomb shelter, the whole world around him dying. Even his pregnant wife has died to rise again to become part of the undead. When Jim receives a call on his cell from his son in New Jersey, he knows he has no choice but to get to him before the undead claim his life. During his travels, he encounters an old preacher, an old survivor and his son and a military group that seems to be causing more harm than good. Many more characters are mixed to the lot, counting a prostitute with a cocaine addiction and a man who might just be the reason the dead have come to invade the earth. All of them are working for the same goal; survival. Brutal, terrifying and honest, The Rising is that rare horror book that completely delivers the goods. You never really know where Keene's twisted imagination will lead you next, and it is this very unpredictability that makes The Rising stand high and tall above all others. The book offers many moment that will stay with you for a long time; a scene concerning a pregnant woman, and another one about a mute boy I will not soon forget. The book is peopled with dozens of characters and yet, you never confuse any of them. Keene has found a very distinct voice for each of his characters. All of them feel very real. And the fact that Keene never falters, not even in the book's final moments, only enhances this truly terrifying experience. Take note of Brian Keene's name. The Rising announces a bright new voice in horror fiction. He reminds us what real horror is all about.
Rating:
Summary: Zombies, nuff said.
Review: When one of youre most quoted movie lines is: I know youre in there I can smell your BRAINS!!! You know youre a zombie fiction fan. Guilty as charged. I wont bore you with the obligatory plot outline. Its a zombie siege story thats all you need to know. But what makes this story work is its told in a simple, straightforward style. Clean sentences. Powerful scenes. Strong action and gore. None of this on and on with constant internalizations with every character. Or long, thick blocks of unending paragraphs explaining every second of a characters tedious history. The characters are motivated, now get on with the story. Keene avoids the sin that drives me most crazy about any writer: verbal diarrhea. *clears throat*, Im looking at you Mr. King. He gets RIGHT to things as our hero is stuck in an underground stronghold-with a periscope nonetheless-and guess whats trying to get at him? You got it zombies! Anyway the story continues with characters you come to care about. The hook is strong with our main character risking everything to find his hopefully still alive son a few hundered miles away. Read it. Enjoy it. Long live zombie fiction! Thanks Brian Keene!
Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: A top notch, slam bang, in your face horror novel. The author pulls no punches and gives it full throttle. The Rising is an intense read, and the unexpected ending is oh so satisfying (especially if you're a fan of Dawn of the Dead or Carpenter's The Thing).
Rating:
Summary: An incredible book
Review: What an incredible book. The last time I read such a sweeping, epic horror novel - where every character jumps off the page as a real person (good and bad alike) - was when I'd first read King's THE STAND. THE RISING is MUCH more merciless - as one blurb says, it's "not for the squeamish". Many scenes are extremely graphic, since Keene is not hesitant to walk over someone's concept of "taboo". This could make a book hard to read, but in Keene's hands it's masterwork. Though he's relatively new to the mass market, his writing is as good, if not better, than most popular writers out today. You learn to trust him very early on. From the first page, through relentless and always-interesting plotlines, to a closing scene which satisfies on many levels, THE RISING - though not for the faint of heart - is one of the best books to hit the horror world in a long time.
Rating: 
Summary: A Whole Lot of Not Much
Review: I will skip the plot synopsis of the book because it can be read elsewhere and in zombie fiction it is mostly irrelevant. All zombie novels have the same plot: try to live. The problem is in the writing, not in the plot: The characters are all archetypes, not a single one has a second facet. THe Military men are all power hungry fools, the Preacher steadfastly believes in god, and the main character is single minded in his determintation to see his sun, which he espouses over and over again in a series of ham handed soap box speeches. The only character in the book that is believable is the prostitute who actually makes an arc (however minimal) throughout the book. Further, the book, has a problem in striking a balance between horror, gore and sentimentalism. It shifts wildly from one to the other and then the other and back again without even trying to smooth it out. The dialogue is standard, with every character sounding roughly the same, and the descriptions of the fighting and the zombies is good, except the author has a proclivity for using the word "Sloughed" which shows up on one quarter of the pages. Oh, one complaint about the plot: the situation as the author has set it up presents an unwinnable scenario for humanity and this wouldn't be a problem except that when it suits him, the author forgets the scenario and contrives whatever necesary to get our hero out of trouble. I mean, i'm into the hero winning, but don't make every path easy for him while making it impossible for all others. Perhaps the worst thing that can be said about the book is the ending. It is obvious that the author, by not giving us an ending, by not giving us some finality, has written this book in such a way as to guarantee a sequel. That would be nice if this book was advertised as a serial novel, but it was not. TO get to the end and then not have the book end makes me feel like i've been duped. It feels like a bait and switch.
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty good horror book but....
Review: This is a good zombie book that has quite a few scares. My two complaints about the book,though,are the ending (although I just read somewhere there is to be a sequel that takes up right where this book ended)and that I have read almost the exact same senario in a sci-fi series. Has anyone read Peter F. Hamilton's THE NIGHT's DAWN TRILOGY? In these books the dead come back almost the exact same way (back from Hell, though they have mucho destructive powers that the zombies in the Rising don't have) and in almost the exact same situation (a black hole?). It may just be me, but when I was reading The Rising I was thinking maybeBrain Keene had read that trilogy and got most of his ideas from it.
Rating:
Summary: All Hail the New Stephen King
Review: Obviously, the last reviewer had a personal axe to grind and didn't even read the book in question. These zombies move FAST! And that's just the beginning. Brian Keene has given zombie muthos its biggest upgrade since George Romero. This is a fantastic, brutal, emotional and absolute scary read. Can't wait to see what Keene comes up with next!
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