title: Dead Sea
author: Brian Keene
publisher: Leisure Books
pages: 337
reading time: 4 days (27/05/2009 to 30/05/2009)
rating: 8
I've already read and review several books from Brian Keene. Two of them were one of my favourite books in the Zombie Genre... The Rising and City of the Dead. I enjoy them both. Then I was away from this author for a couple of years (too many books to read)... Then I went back with Castaways which I didn't enjoy that much. But I knew the author and I know he is a great author so I tried again with Dead Sea and voila... Excelent book.
The plot is as simple as other zombie books are... a unknown plague that starts with infesting the rats and pass from specie to specie... some seem immune for some time but then they fall to it.
I like the plot and it's a conceivable one. If the land life is being overun by the plague where to go? I am not a normal person so I think about it (well more in a apocalyptic kind of view)... To run away from zombies there are two places that are the top choices... The Sea (as the author said) and the antartic or artic region. With zero temperatures there is less life and thus less probability to the plague get there. Besides with zero temperatures and a dead body the most likely event is the corpses being frozen... Both places have one minor inconvenience... food and water... Well you could go the sea in some lake and in the artic you have frozen water. Food then.
Well getting back to the book...
The book itself is in the first person and the main character is a gay black guy. I talked to my girlfriend and I thought the choice of the main character is an odd one but a good one nevertheless. Maybe only in portugal but when I think a gay person I think of a white person but okay... That didn't bother me.
Now the other characters... We have two children that the main character (Lamar) saves. We have some guy who happened to sold bibles (with particular interest in fire arms) that saves them all... And other minor characters...
I enjoyed the first half the book as they run away from the plague and get to the ship. The second half is the life itself on the ship and how they tried to survive.
Then not only land animals have the plague but also the fish... This infects one person on the ship and all hell break loses. They go to a oil platform and the main character, the two children and a girl are stranted there... They feed on birds that so far don't have the plague...
As other books from Keene in ends with a big question (because the birds are getting the plague as well)... the end is very good. It's open to a sequel but sincerily I can live with it. I think this question that he presents is worthwhile and make you imagine...
Interesting in the book one of the characters start talking of myths and the role of heroes. Abook by Joseph Campbell called the Hero of a Thousand Faces. I had the book and had been reading for a while... is not a book to read all in all...
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