| Title | : | Urban Gothic |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0843960906 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780843960907 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 301 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 2009 |
Urban Gothic Reviews
-
Urban Gothic is a full on screaming, head caved in with a hammer, fingers bitten off by a monstrous dwarf kind of horror that is fucking wincingly good horror and a barrel load of fun. This is the Wrong Turn horror films diverted into a suburban street in Philadelphia and landing up in a house that has more doors, passages and secret rooms with murderous psychos than Horror Kill House 16: Revenge of the freaks. If you want to be chased round by an grotesque 7ft monstrosity named Nigel, wielding a hammer that’s too big for little Thor and loads of other friendly aberrations then you've come to the right place.
A totally riotous, tortuously enjoyable horror that has humongous big and tiny freaks chasing down the usual bunch of young kids on their way to score some weed after a concert. Throw into the mix a copper plunderer who definitely picked the wrong house to rip off, stupid boy and a bunch of neighbours looking to launch a rescue mission. And we have all the ingredients for some good old fashioned horror, plenty of outrageous violence and loads of fun. Not a classic but what do you want, it does the job and does it very well.
A 3.5* Rating
Also posted at
http://paulnelson.booklikes.com/post/... -
At night, there were monsters on the streets.
And even worse things in the shadows.
Ick! What a macabre freak show. This novel is, quite simply put, a gore-fest. Or a crash course in taking an already terrifying situation, and making it worse. Oh, so much worse.
Bloody saliva dripped from his open mouth, leaking around gums that had receded from his black, broken teeth.
This is horror stripped down to the bare nuts and bolts.
Is it frightening? Yes
Is it bloody? Yes
And that is the gist of it.
The woman’s skin wasn’t her own. She was wearing someone else’s.
Brian Keene is pretty well known in horror circles, particularly for novels like
Ghoul and
The Rising. I’m not entirely sure where Urban Gothic fits into his repertoire. I will give him this though: despite the fact that the gore is over-the-top and events sometimes play out plainly ridiculous, it never really feels like he’s trying too hard. This is nothing short of a miracle, given some of the twaddle that goes down here. Perhaps this is more of a homage to splatterpunk than anything else, and should not be taken too seriously?
”Don’t know how he keeps from cutting himself on the skull fragments. Them things can be sharp.”
The Good, the Bad & the Ugly
The Good – it’s Brian Keene, and it’s horror, and it’s got deformed freakazoid cannibal mutant things
The Bad – brainless characters (often literally – ho ho) and “scares” that alternate between ridiculously silly and frankly disgusting; it’s way too OTT to be genuinely scary
The Ugly – what, you’re even asking? There’s a lot of ugly in this book
“Don’t be stupid. You can’t milk a man once he’s dead.”
I would have liked if goodreads allowed for a rating out of 10, or at least half-stars. I would have liked to rate Urban Gothic 5/10, or 2.5 stars. Now I have to settle for either 2 or 3, neither of which particularly appeal to me. To be fair though, Urban Gothic never pretends to be anything other than a (rather hardcore) horror novel (what were you expecting, after all?) so I am giving it the benefit of the doubt by rounding my rating up (and not down).
Something warm and wet squished between her toes.
In conclusion: if you’re a horror aficionado (with a high gross-out tolerance) and the thought of, for instance, heads bursting like overripe watermelons doesn’t make your stomach churn, or if you’re not averse to an antagonist wielding, for instance, an enormous pus-dripping manhood (don’t ask) then read this book. Everybody else: stay away, stay way away.
”Let your insides slip out and show you what they look like, all wet and shiny. Ever strangled a man with his own intestines?” -
Run and don't look back!
WELCOME TO PHILADELPHIA'S UNDERGROUND
Kerri, Tyler, Stephanie, Brett, Javier and Heather, were getting back from a concert and they have the poor choice of trying to get some weed...
...bad mistake!
Since they got a car break and now they are running for their lives in a macabre house and also in an impossible dark underground where they'll get no mercy or rest, against a lethal mutant society.
Since the beginning you'll realize that they aren't fooling around and that those teenagers are in truly danger and the chances of survival are really thin.
Keep alert, keep running, don't rest, don't look back! -
What I like about urban gothic is how they were driving and they end up in this bad part of the neighborhood and there car breaks down and this group of kids come walking up to them and then they all run for it. They run into this abandoned house which they think nobody lives in it until this beast comes out of nowhere and attacks Tyler with a sledge hammer to his head. Then the beast attacks stephanie with the hammer and smashes her skull in. In one part of the book they go through this door and come back out and they are trapped but then the lights go out and they all hold hands but then Kerri realizes that she is holding the hand of one of the beasts and she screams and bites down on the tongue of the beast and injures it. They end up in these traps and one of the beasts kids has Brett and slams his head down on the hard floor then it bites off two of Brett's fingers. I also like how Brian Keene describes his horrible disgusting monsters and how he always makes you feel uncomfortable and grossed out in his books. I give this book 5 stars
-
Audiobook - 3.5 stars
Story - 3 stars -
Updated to 5 stars. The first like 20 pages wasn’t my favorite, but the imagery illicited in this extreme horror was unmatched. I want to read every Keene book now 😂
Yikes on so many bikes. This was gross. Vivid and graphic, but ultimately gross. Highly recommend if you like Jack Ketchum’s Dead River series. -
I have dreamt about reading this book for months and once I got it I read the sucker in half a day. The good part - it's full of icky, gross horrific stuff that makes horror books fun, the not so good part - I wasn't crazy about it. The character development was shallow and maybe if the six kids who get stuck in the bad part of town at night weren't so stupid and lame, I would have liked the book more. It's hard to relate to someone who acts in a way that gets them in trouble in the first place, not to mention I could hardly tell them apart, yes they had different names but they were mere filler in the book, something for the monsters to snack on, fish food I guess one could say. And if I wanted to read a book about fish food I would have shopped in the marine biology section of Amazon, not the non existent horror section. Basically a bunch of white kids get stuck in the ghetto and when confronted with another human being that doesn't look like them, they freak out and end up making a grave mistake. They run into an abandoned house and find that they can't get out, but that's not the worst part. They are not alone in the house, and what they encounter makes them shriek, about forty times for each person, that action is repeated through out the book. Fans of "Hills Have Eyes" and those who love vile descriptions will enjoy, to me it felt more like a way to take up pages, but didn't build the story into something great. The parts of the book where someone is mourned were good, those little bits of misery and missing the dead person made them feel real, but when alive, the kids weren't so interesting. Fewer characters but with better development would have shined. I didn't get the dark gothic part of this, the urban part yes but the cloying, eerie intensity was not there, it was more of a teen outing gone wrong.
Keene has slowly emerged as the recognizable name in horror, I personally look forward to his books and stories, my favorites were "Dead Sea" and "Dark Hollow" but I felt that this book lacked that special something, at least for me. I know that Keene doesn't let his audience dictate his craft, but I could clearly see the lack of juice in the novel when I read Ketchum's "Cover" the next day, the difference was night and day. "Cover" flowed and entertained with writing that was easy to absorb while this felt like I was following words written on the page. I thought of giving up on "Urban Gothic" half way through but decided to stick to it and just finish it, honestly I didn't get into the story until I got to page 260 which was the ending to my favorite chapter, the one that really grabbed me. Too many additions, unnecessary characters ( give us less and it will be more) and hastily finished resolutions to few things in the book that took away from the story were just few of the problems that I had with it. To each his own of course, some will love this some won't, I simply wouldn't want to read it again but I will definitely buy his next novel, after all horror is hard to resist when you really love it. -
When I write reviews, I don't like posting spoilers about the books I read. I always post what it's about and what I thought of it. Here is my review for Urban Gothic. First, I love Brian Keene. His writing always keeps me interested in what I am reading. Urban Gothic is about a group of suburban white teenagers who go to a rap concert. They want some weed, so they go looking for some. As they are riding around, their car breaks down(kinda sounds like the beginning of The Last House on The Left, if you know you know). The teenagers end up having a confrontation with local groups of African Americans. The teens end up running away, find an abandoned house not knowing what is inside. Urban Gothic is like a mixture of the movies The Hills Have Eyes and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which I love. Urban Gothic, to me, was very fast pace, it didn't drag on before anything happened. It was non-stop, and I absolutely love that. Brian Keene captivated the characters so well. I couldn't put the book down. I definitely recommend this book to people. I love how Urban Gothic reminds me of 80s horror movies I grew up watching. This book is definitely a great one. Check it out, and you'll love it.
-
Oh, everything I want in a horror story is in this book! It was gory, bloody and disgusting and I love it so much! I've seen most of the kills done in every slasher flick that I've watched over the years but I didn't care. I was completely in a good mood when I read this so nothing could go wrong for me.
I've seen some people comparing Brian Keene to Edward Lee but I have not read anything written by Edward so I can't really say anything about the matter. All I know is I have enjoyed this book from the beginning till the end.
I think I should know by now that it's better to stay in the comfort of your home rather than venture outside or go on a road trip clueless about what's out there. It's a dangerous world! -
"Shit happens."
That may be a wee bit of an understatement for the unfortunate group of friends who get trapped in a house filled to the brim with a brood of deformed cannibalistic penis pus dripping, leathery vagina human skin wearing giants and mutant midgets bearing knives, razor sharp teeth and a taste for human flesh. That will teach them to have their car break down in the hood.
As a Brian Keene homage to Edward Lee, I went into this one expecting pretty much what I got and honestly, I kind of liked it. It was bloody disgusting to start with and then it got bad. For a no-brainer, splatter, gross out fest drenched with blood and bodily fluids, this right here, boys and girls…is your huckleberry.
3 Nipple Ripping Skug Titty Twisters!! -
This book is pure grind-core. And I will admit it is not one of my favourite genres.
So aside from not liking the subject matter, Keen did a wonderful job with the writing. Maybe that’s why this story turned my stomach. And it’s very rare that a book turns my stomach.
So grind-core lovers rejoice and pick this story up and enjoy the gore. -
My IQ dropped nine points over the course of this novel.
-
Haunted houses litter the horror genre, but URBAN GOTHIC, by Brian Keene, takes the subject and slams it on its head.
Ya see, this starts off as if this is your garden-variety haunted house tale. That is until you meet the residents of the "haunted house". Ya see, this house is full of backwooded-hillbilly-cannibals that are thirsty for some fresh meat. (Oh, I forgot to mention that it is located in da hood.) And these BHC are so grotesque from inbreeding and lack of sunlight that they are not soon forgotten. (Drop me a line after you've read Zed's conversation with one of the gals about a certain garment one of the guys was wearing.)
From the initial scence of violence (I wish I could tell you about it, but it soooooo much better read with virgin eyes), the pace hardly ever lets up. There are a few moments where Keene tries to get political about the state of some neighborhoods in America, but these are few and far between and don't really serve a purpose in this book. The real story is watching if this group of kids can survive the night.
If you haven't experienced Keene's work before think of it as a montage of (early) Stephen King, Edward Lee, Bentley Little, and Jeffery Deaver.
Recommendation: A good read if you have an afternoon (or, if brave enough, a night) with nothing else to do. -
Преди десетина дни ми се причете хорър. За щастие (или нещастие), купувам два пъти повече, отколкото чета, и така съм натрупал предостатъчно голям избор от книги за четене. Все по-често поглеждах към "Градска готика" - единствената книга на Браян Кийн, която е издавана у нас (към този момент) и ето на...
Очаквах някаква неособено задълбочена бруталия, и горе-долу това получих, но не съвсем. Кийн със сигурност е много добър писател и макар загатнатият сюжет на задната корица да звучи като клишето на клишетата, така и не почувствах досада докато четях. За сметка на това така се напрегнах и натегнах в тия 250 страници, че сега имам нужда да олабя с нещо леко и забавно. След време ще потърся "ПредгрАДСКА готика"!
Препоръчвам на почитателите на хоръра (като мен, що-годе) със здрави нерви и стомаси! Надявам се на още от Кийн на майчин език!
П.П. Отначалото имаше някои възбуквално преведени Хамерикански изрази, а се забелязваха и коректорски пропуски (като пустото кривУличене). -
Wowza! This was my first Brian Keene book and definitely will be reading more. It was a brutal and gory read packed with a lot of action. I would say it was kind of a Wrong Turn type vibe to it and flew through the pages. This is a book that will keep your attention through every page.
-
Brian Keene channels Richard Laymon with Urban Gothic. At one point he even uses Laymon's favourite word as a homage "rump". The thing is, Keene out-Laymons Laymon here. Urban Gothic is a major achievement. The pace is break-neck throughout and you come to care for the characters as they deal with horrors scarcely put to paper. It is ultra-violent; one character dies in a way I have never read before; but shit when you run into a whole subterranean cannibal civilization there is bound to be blood. Some of the characters reminded me of that film from the 1930s Tod Browning's "Freaks". Only Keene's things that breathed and consumed were much more frightening. And the ending is satisfying, a place where many authors seem to stumble after a great ride.
The best tribute I can give to the book is that yesterday I was at the supermarket and I smelled something rotten coming from the storeroom. It immediately reminded me of Brian Keene's Urban Gothic.
The best Brian Keene book I have read to date. -
Urban Gothic essentially asks what if The Hills Have Eyes happened in the middle of the city. Keene does a nice job establishing the part of the city where the police don't always respond to calls and the house within that neighborhood that everyone just ignores. But what's inside that house?
As it turns out, a host (and I do mean host) of monstrosities. Keene does not hold back on the graphic nature of the scenes inside -- over-the-top gore and rape are frequent elements in these pages. Readers looking for splatterpunk elements and an intriguing set-up need look no further. Readers intent on fleshed out characters to invest in may find Urban Gothic lacking. I enjoyed the book enough to check out Suburban Gothic, co-written with Bryan Smith, but did find it hard to care when someone I just spent 200 pages with had their brains mashed in. -
Не ми хареса. Много тромава и наивна.
-
I don’ t know why I got so link-happy in the review.
How to describe Urban Gothic? In a word: icky.
The premise: Six white teens from the suburbs are returning home from a concert when they end up lost in the ghetto of Philadelphia. Their car breaks down in a dangerous neighborhood. When they’re approached by a group of black teens who act in a threatening manner. One of the white teen panics, calls them the ‘n’ word, and runs.
Sidebar: This didn’t ring true for me. Believe me when I say that this is not a complete criticism; in today’s schools and society enough white guilt is taught that the use of that word wouldn’t even be part of the active vocabulary of an upper middle class white teen. Not that I think they wouldn’t know that word, I just don’t think it would be used. But perhaps I’m naïve; I just know that my lower middle class friends and I wouldn’t have used it. End sidebar.
The slur has its expected effect though, the white teens start running and the angry (and as we find out later, hurt) black teens chase after them. The white teens head for a creepy, old, Victorian style house at the end of the street. They go inside and the mayhem begins. Almost immediately the way out is barred and one of them is decapitated.
What they find in the house reminded me of the movie Bleeders (
http://bit.ly/bYOrPo) a little. Inbred, animalistic freaks that enjoy eating humans begin to hunt them through the large house which has secret passages, sliding walls, and booby traps throughout.
Except this is much, much, much more disgusting and violent. And seriously, perhaps I’m a bit impulsive, but if I was trapped in a house of mutant, cannibalistic freaks with little hope of survival and I had a lighter – well I wouldn’t see much harm in setting the place on fire. Or one of the mutant cannibalistic freaks. Seriously, Let’s Start a Riot!
http://bit.ly/UqwYE
I must congratulated Mr. Keene on creating some truly unsympathetic villians though. On the downside, note that I haven’t mentioned a single character name. It hardn’t matters; there isn’t much personality to be found here.
Meanwhile, outside, the black teens who hadn’t meant to scare the kids so badly are feeling guilty. The house at the end of the street, to borrow a phrase from Shirley Jackson, “was born bad.”
http://bit.ly/21zGBf. Or at least they know that nobody in the neighborhood goes near it, not in their generation and not in their parents. However, despite the fact that they were called a bad name, they feel guilty that their intimidation sent the other teens charging into the house of unknown evil. They go to an older neighbor’s house to place a call to the police which goes unanswered (not uncommon in this neighborhood). While waiting for help that never comes, they finally decide to go offer what help they can.
Bottom-line: If you want to read about humans fighting for their lives in horrific circumstances, this is indeed the book for you. If that doesn’t appeal to you, give it a miss. As for me *sob* I’m going to go read something by Dr. Seuss or Laura Ingalls Wilder. -
Originally published on
Not Now...Mommy's Reading
I just finished Urban Gothic today. It starts off interestingly enough, six teens from the suburbs are leaving a hard core rap concert when they decide to take a detour through the seedier parts of town to score some weed. Of course, teenagers + hard core rap + drugs always equals a bad idea and this is confirmed when the teens end up with a flat tire and are soon approached by another group of teens whose attire of sagging pants, gold chains and hats to the back clearly indicate that they are not from the suburbs. I chuckled a bit to myself as I read this confrontation because I knew that things were quickly about to get out of hand due to prejudices both groups had towards the other going in. No sooner had I thought it, the ever controversial N-word was thrown out which resulted in the suburban teens bolting into the abandoned house at the end of the block. The teens soon found out that this house is not abandoned and they would have had better luck facing the crowd outside on the streets than the foes that lurk within the walls of the house.
This was a decent read. I managed to complete it in three days. What kept it from being a good or a great read to me were too many unanswered questions. Like who were these mutants? Where had they come from? How had they come to be? Were they actually human at one point? Were they just cannibals that laid waste to whoever was unlucky enough to stumble into their abode? At one point, I thought that one of the mutants might have actually been a human who had been allowed to live in exchange for breeding purposes but I never got any clarity on that. Also, it was hinted at that some of the teens had a back story that would have given them more depth or made them a bit more interesting but it was never explored. For example, Javier and the terrible things he had lived through before. Ummm, like what? I understand that I couldn't get a whole story on each one but instead of reading about a penis dripping pus and blood - maybe a scene that showed me why I should care about any of the six other than that they were human and didn't deserve any of what they had to deal with. Just something.
Nonetheless, I still rank Brian Keene among my favorite horror authors. The only legitimate gripe I had with this book is the usage of the term "All of the sudden".
This has been occurring in more and more novels and...PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF THE GODS, OLD AND NEW, STOP IT!!! "ALL OF THE SUDDEN" MAKES NO SENSE. NONE. STOP USING IT. IT'S "ALL OF A SUDDEN".IT WILL ALWAYS BE "ALL OF A SUDDEN". STOP TRYING TO MAKE ALL OF THE SUDDEN HAPPEN!!!
Seriously, though. Stop. -
Straight up the most weird and filthy and disgusting horror novel i have ever read. and i have read a lot. my only complaint, it coulda been about twice as long and it woulda scored higher. characterization was just lacking.
-
Sometimes you just want to see teenagers getting smashed to a pulp by sledgehammers wielded by grotesque mutant cannibals. Thankfully, Urban Gothic, Brian Keene's loving tribute to extreme horror author Edward Lee, has this in spades. (Urban Gothic is, in fact, dedicated to Lee, who, Keene writes, "once gave me crabs...")
The set-up is familiar - a group of whitebread high schoolers are returning from a hardcore rap battle concert when their car breaks down in the middle of a rough inner-city Philly neighborhood. When a group of black guys approach them, the high schoolers freak out and run, finding cover in an abandoned house. Unknown to them, of course, this house has a history, and the people living near it know all too well to stay away. This house isn't haunted though -- oh, no. No, no, no. There are far worse things than ghosts and goblins hidden inside these walls. Much, much worse.
Urban Gothic is freaking brutal, man. Probably the most brutal Keene book I've read thus far. It's dark, bleak, and oh so graphic. It's the kind of book you're grateful for not coming with Smell-O-Vision or scratch-and-sniff stickers. Keene doesn't waste any time putting the pedal to the metal here, and it's not long before we're introduced to the wicked, man-eating monstrosities that inhabit this house in a scene that presents one hell of a shock to the system. That moment, of course, is just for starters, and Keene fucking floors it from there. We're thrust headlong into a carnival of gore and putrescence as these white suburbanite kids are forced to fight for their lives, or at least die trying to escape. Keene spares us little in the way of details as anatomies unfurl and he relishes describing the various disfigurements, genetic abnormalities, and puss-oozing STDs of the house's horrifying inhabitants.
Although Keene revels in creating a virtuoso slaughterhouse, there's also some welcome commentary on the plight of urban blight and the importance of valuing the areas we live in. Originally published in 2009, there's plenty about this book that is still all-too relevant more than a decade later. There's a mention early on, for instance, about Tyler having inherited his brother's now-broken down car after Dustin went off to Afghanistan. In a better world, this detail would have shown the book's age, placing it as an artifact of the late-aughts, rather than reminding us that this book could have been written yesterday as we close in on our second decade of war in the Middle East.
Keene depicts an urban wasteland that feels all-too familiar to this Detroit suburbanite, but he wisely avoids stereotyping the neighborhoods residents. In fact, characters like Leo and his friends, actively rebel against being viewed as stereotypes, with Leo in particular coming across as a level-headed kid with plenty of good intentions that might not always come across that way on the surface. While we don't get too deeply involved with the urban characters presented here, there's enough complexity to prevent them from being wooden cardboard cutouts, and I found myself rooting for them right from the get-go.
What I appreciated most, though, were the ways in which Keene managed to flip the usual White Savior tropes often found in horror. Rather than the white characters coming to town and vanquishing evil, saving the neighborhood for its black residents, the plot nicely inverts expectations. It's the white crew that's in deep, deep trouble here, running into dangers well beyond their ken, while Leo and his friends, as well as their neighbors, try to figure out how to save them. It's a welcome reversal, giving the splattery spectacle that gussies up the story a welcome bit of depth.
Where Urban Gothic does feel a bit dated, though, is in the urban resident's responses to the lack of police action and the state of their neighborhood circa 2009. They live in a part of town that 911 doesn't respond to in a very timely fashion, if at all. One resident, Mr. Perry, chalks it all up to economics, which given that this would have been written around the height of an economic recession, makes a certain amount of sense. However, reading this in late 2020, I can't help but notice the lack of deliberation on certain other topics, like the systemic racism within police and government that conspire to keep urban areas impoverished, which in the here-and-now feel too plainly danced around in the pre-Black Lives Matter world these characters inhabit, particularly from Mr. Perry, who is clearly an intelligent and well-studied man. Although I have no doubt at all that the characters would have been aware of these racial aspects themselves, particularly as racism and outsider perception plays a role in other elements of this story, sticking to the economics of poverty almost feels like Keene was playing it a bit too safe in 2009. Odd for a book so heavily focused on extremes, but it does make me all the more curious to see where he and co-writer Bryan Smith take their Suburban Gothic follow-up later this year. (What's that? A sequel?! Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. And based on the balls-to-the-wall gorefest this book was, I am all too eager to secure my copy of part deux. Suburban Gothic just became one of my most anticipated titles of the year.)
One minor caveat aside, I can't help but love Urban Gothic. It's a bloody, sloppy, living nightmare of a book, one that knows exactly what it wants to be and pulls it off with zero pretensions otherwise. Keene packs in plenty of shocks and hardcore horror, making the repulsive and disturbing an awful bit of fun. This one's definitely not for the squeamish! -
This flashback to the splatter-punk days of horror novels is a difficult book to compare to other horror novels. Why? Because all I can think of to compare it to are movies. Indeed, it feels like Roger Corman was looking over the author's shoulder and saying "Here's some money. Come back in 15 days and give me a script". Urban Gothic ends up being a bloody mixture of movie ideas: The People Under The Stairs meets The Hills Have Eyes meet every other mutant cannibal movie.
Not that this isn't any fun. It's a riot. Spoiled teens trapped in haunted ghetto house with cannibal mutants. There are some nice social messages at the beginning. But pretty soon they get lost in an orgy of blood and gore. This one is for the hard-core horror fan who thinks victims slipping on their own intestines is funny. Personally I'll stick with Keene's end-of-the-world novels and chalk this one up as an amusing detour for the author. -
A splatterpunk gore fest. If you like cheap, cheesy gore filled horror movies, then you should like
Urban Gothic. Not the best novel I have read by
Brian Keene but nevertheless entertaining and excelling at descriptions of gore. The ending is rather abrupt and anti-climactic after going through the harrowing underground pursuit. -
Стабилно-брутална история. Доволен съм. Описанията бяха цветущи, имаше уродливи и гротескни изроди, които добре се напаснаха към цялата история. Ако си подходил с очакване за определени неща в книгата, както мен, то надали си останал разочарован.
Финалът ми се с��ори леко претупан, може би. Имам усещането, че можеше да има по-детайлно развитие какво се случва накрая; така написано, сякаш има мегдан за продължение. -
A super fun and gory read despite the slow parts that ruined what would have otherwise gave the book a nice flow.
-
I'm not going to say too much about this book, except that I didn't care enough about the characters to not flip to the end to see what happens. It ended the way I thought it would.
This has your typical teen horror movie plot: kill the young, good-looking people off one by one, making each killing more gruesome than the next. Zzzzzzzz.
And how did such mutants come to live even in a ghetto where people keep to themselves? You would think that after 20+ years of people in the neighborhood missing, someone would have torched the place late one night. Who's going to stop them? The po-po? And in just two or three generations 7-foot tall deformed creatures and dwarves with all kinds of weird, disgusting disfigurations were bred?
Loved Keene's zombie novels and Conqueror Worms. The excerpt from Darkness on the Edge of Town looks promising. I might give that one a look when it comes out. -
Enjoyed this book a lot!!
It took me months to read, but that was more about me. I’ve struggled reading a lot lately, but the fact I kept going back to this book shows how good it was. It’s given me the bug back and I can’t eait to get onto my next one now!
This is an absolutely mental story, completely balls to the wall madness.
If you enjoy a good old gore fest then you’ll enjoy this. Keene hasn’t let me down yet. -
I started reading Brian Keene with "Dead Sea", which I really enjoyed. It changed up some Zombie conventions (species hopping, etc.) and had a realistic, well developed protagonist. While everyone was an archetype, it also acknowledged that flat out, which was funny.
Unfortunately, the past few offerings have fallen flat for me. This book was pretty much crap. As I read, I felt as though I was reading the script of a film that I would decry as symptomatic of the ruination of the horror genre. Writing genre fiction, I admit, means writing for a specific audience that wants specific things. This is just a lazy attempt at placation. Additionally, one thing that has really irked me has been Keene's recent reliance on rape of female characters. Rape is definitely a scary thing, but using it, repeatedly, in every book, as part of the eventual fate suffered buy his consistently 2D female characters is just gross, and not in a gory, horror way.
On a positive note, I think Brian Keene writes about race and race relations better than your average academic-his writing is clear and accessible or novelist-not relying on sterotypes. He portrays his characters of color as real people, instead of ridiculous "urban" stereotypes perpetuated by most American media. It's also great to see the black guy come out the hero, instead of being offed in the first act, as is typical of the genre.
I was also surprised, after reading many reviews exclaiming "OH MY GOD, SO GORY!" to find this as really no more gory than his usual fare. At least limitless gore could have redeemed this dull tome. This is strictly by the numbers twaddle. I won't call it hack writing, b/c Keene is still a step above the genre rabble, but it comes damn close.
