All right, let's get one thing straight--we've all read zombie books before and we've all seen the zombie movies. There've been slow moving zombies and freaky fast moving zombies and, however fast they move, there's just something about zombies that tend to fascinate us. The dead flesh made to move again... hungry for the living, thirsting for blood...truly disturbing.

However, 'disturbing' is a word that I would use loosely when referring to CITY OF THE DEAD by Brian Keene. This sequel to Keene's award winning novel, THE RISING, is a zombie story of another nature. In this book, the moving force behind the reanimation of the dead is a legion of demons whose recent escape from their eternal prison in the void has unleashed them upon the Earth in unnerving numbers.

No...disturbing is just the beginning of the effect that this tale has on the reader. Keene lets his gruesome imagination run wild in this bloodbath story of humanity's last days on Earth. He holds nothing back as zombie birds pluck the eyes from their fleeing victims, as entrails are pulled out of newly ravaged abdomens, as living flesh is eaten while the still living look on in horror. Wow, does this book reach for everything that gnaws at the back of your mind, pulling on the heartstrings of terror that normally lie buried underneath the layers of our minds.

Keene's style is fast and furious, those pages keep turning even as you wince and grimace in revulsion. You see, this is no ordinary tale of zombies. These are the undead come back possessed by evil demons, beings who reside within the decaying brains of their hosts, able to draw upon past knowledge and memories to direct the body's actions. These are intelligent zombies, able to fire weapons, to drive vehicles, to plan and scheme and lay traps for the living.

In short, these are an enemy whose ranks swell with more members for every victim they kill. For as soon as a living being dies, it opens the way for one more demon in the void to fill up the empty shell left by the departing soul and reanimate the flesh even before it's cold. That makes it a bit harder for Keene's human survivors to make their way through the doom and gloom as they are being chased by an endless army of blood-thirsty undead.

The story itself centers on a father and son, reunited as the book begins, and fighting for their lives along with a small band of fellow humans to escape the endless pursuit of the zombie legions. Along the way, a host of other likable and not so likable characters enrich the story, make some situations better, make some situations worse, and push the tale toward its climactic conclusion.

I must say, I haven't yet read THE RISING and, now that I'm finished with CITY OF THE DEAD, my need to get my hands on a copy of the first book in this two-book set has grown exponentially. Keene deals out the blood and the gore in vast amounts, filling the streets with carnage as his characters move through the tale. This is a story of doomsday for not only the people and animals of the Earth but for the Earth itself. This is a story of our instinctive will to survive, even against seemingly insurmountable odds, and the scary lengths that each of us would go to when pitted against living through sheer insanity in order to simply remain alive.

CITY OF THE DEAD is not for the squeamish or for the weak of stomach, to be sure, but for fans of horror fiction this book is a tour-de-force that is not to be missed. Now, let me tell you, I just turned over the first page of Keene's next novel, TERMINAL, and he's got me hooked again. The man can write and I, for one, will be checking out the horror sections in my local bookstores quite frequently and with great anticipation for additional Keene titles. Let's face it, we all like zombie stories, no matter how gross or how gruesome, we just can't seem to get enough of them. And, with CITY OF THE DEAD, Keene delivers... he truly delivers.