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

Very intense

Listened to this book while I was traveling. It is very intense and kept me wondering what was going to happen next, at times it kept me on the edge of my seat.

A Worthy Sequel to The Rising!

3.5/5 stars!

CITY OF THE DEAD has been on my TBR pile for a year or two, (and on my physical bookshelf), so when I saw it listed on my Audioboom! email, I immediately requested it. I'm glad I did!

This book picks up right where THE RISING left off. Most of the group is now trapped in a house and you can't help but to root for them. The zombies they are fighting are not your normal zombie-they can be fast, use weapons, and drive cars. They are led by Ob, and in this book we learn more about him and his mission on earth.

Fast paced and filled with lots of fun action,(zombie crocs and birds anyone?), there isn't much time to rest here, and why would you want to? There are plenty of gross outs and characters to root for and not of lot of time for quiet moments, fancy prose, or reflection. If this is the type of book you're in the mood for, then CITY OF THE DEAD is the book for you!

I listened to the audio, narrated by Joe Hempel. It took me a while to get into his narrative style, but once I did, I ended up enjoying it quite a bit.

Recommended for those in the mood for bloody, smart-zombie fun!

Thanks to Audioboom! and Joe Hempel for this audio copy in exchange for my honest review. This is it!*

wild!

possibly my favorite post apocalypse book ever! contending with I Am legend.
absolutely terrifying and incredibly gruesome! so so good!

Not as good as first

The writing just wasn’t as impressive as the first book. The story was fine, but the cast was too big, so we don’t really care about anyone as they die one by one. I continued to like the new take on the genre, but thinking zombies and zombie animals is just too overpowered for us to ever think the protagonist had a chance. Also I could stand the narrators voice for Pig Pen, totally unpleasant to listen to.

Grim, Bloody and Unique

This book is a sequel to The Rising. Just had to get that out there so you don't start with this one. You'd probably be fine and there is a lot of back story references.
This book is grim. The zombies are intelligent and shoot back. They are not zombies in the traditional sense, but are an intelligence inhabiting a dead body. They can talk and use weapons to the extent the body allows. Things don't go well for the living.
Long story short, there are no happy endings. The end is particularly abrupt and depressing in a general way.
The book is well written and moves along at a fast pace. The narration is good and performed well across all the characters.
I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

Great followup to The Rising

I read this book a while back; it's the followup & conclusion to Brian Keene's brilliant "The Rising" zombie apoc novel. It's a slightly different take on the zombie craze where they aren't all dumb slow moving husks. This was a very good book and ended the series as a duology rather than stretching it out and diluting the series like so many other author's tend to do.

The book is subtitled as the authors preferred edition, it is a little longer than the original I read, has some addition scenes and other extended scenes, but overall it's the same book and story. I must say I enjoyed the additional content, when you like a story and author you want as much as you can have of that.

The book is read by Joe Hempel who has become one of my favourite horror narrators, he excels again here, as he did also with his reading of the first book in the series.


“I was voluntarily provided this free review copy audiobook by the author, narrator, or publisher.”