City of the Dead: Author's Preferred Edition

By: Brian Keene

Narrated by: Joe Hempel

The sequel to one of those most popular zombies of all time in a new, uncut, author's preferred edition!

In this sequel to The Rising, cities are overrun with legions of the undead, intent on destroying what's left of the living. Trapped inside a fortified skyscraper, a handful of survivors prepare to make their last stand against an unstoppable, merciless enemy. With every hour their chances diminish and their numbers dwindle, while the ranks of the dead continue to rise. Because sooner or later, everything dies. And then it comes back, ready to kill.

©2005 Brian Keene (P)2017 David N. Wilson

Wonderful New Experience of the Classic

It’s really hard to review the audio version of a book you read originally over 10 years ago. When I first read The Rising and City of the Dead, the current wave of Zombie fic was in it’s infancy. Over a decade later, and I can now truly appreciate how truly cutting edge and influential this novel has become. Also, as I followed Briane Keene’s career, one thing that truly stuck out to me in City of the Dead was how personal this novel must have been for him. City of the Dead isn’t just a novel about inter dimensional “demons” inhabiting the bodies of the dead to eliminate life on this earth, it’s also an often heartbreaking look at a man reconnecting with his child and understanding what it means to be a father. Like most of Keenes’s book, while grounded in traditional tropes, it’s far from a traditional zombie novel. Fans of Keene will rejoice at having these new versions of The Rising and City of the Dead to embrace, and be slightly jealous of the new fans getting to experience these stories for the first time.

Joe Hempel has to take on the task of bring a world alive that is already alive in my brain. Like in most cases, Hempel’s interpretations don’t really match up with how I originally imagined them. Yet, often times, his choices were probably better. His voices for the Siqqusim were more human sounding then I imagined them, but that makes sense and actually makes the “zombies” even more creepy. Where he really excels is driving the pace of the action and building the tension, along with truly bringing to life the relationships between the characters. He has a smooth, crisp delivery style and never falls into the “deep dark horror voice” trap that is overused in this genre. While those new to the series should fully embrace Hempel’s performance, the toughest critics, those fans reliving the book, will be more than satisfied with his performance.

A Truly Interesting Zombie Story

I liked this one a lot. As with the first book, I absolutely hated the narrator, but when I kicked the reading speed up to 1.1x, it was a little more bearable. Other than that, though, this a really good, interesting zombie story. I think that’s notable because most of them are fun but fairly uninteresting, so this one stands out. Lots of fun action and a cool cosmic horror mythology. I also enjoyed the absolute audacity of some of the violence, and the fairly savage ending. If you like zombies, horror stories, cosmic horror, and/or effed up stuff happening in a post apocalyptic hellscape, you’ll like this one. Speed up the reading speed a bit, though.

Inevitable

Horror with no happy ending ... a book where anyone can be taken out at any second even the ones you think are the heroes.

Best zombie story ever!

Great story and unheard of in the zombie world well worth the time to read

End of the line

This is the second book in the series. I was glad to know what happened at the end of the first book now. The story continues with a lot of losses. I expected the ending. I did enjoy this audiobook, which I received for free for an honest review.