author: brian keene
purpose: recommended by a friend of my dad's
copyright: 2007
pages: 318
chapters: 14
review: lamar reed is a black gay man dealing with unemployment in baltimore when "hamelin's revenge" affects the nation. of course, with this being a zombie novel, you must know that "hamelin's revenge" = undead people and animals walking around. after weeks of being holed up in his house, a huge fire engulfing most of the city drives lamar from hiding. he encounters tasha and malik, a brother and sister surviving alone in their apartment building. they decide to escape the city together by heading toward the docks where they plan on taking a boat out of the city of fire and undead. luckily, or so it seems, they meet up with a large group of people who are setting sail on an old coast guard ship. the open sea seems like the best place to be until everything inevitably goes wrong.
the underlying message of this zombie novel has to do with people's positions in society and archetypal roles that everyone plays. there is always a hero, a warrior, a jester, a trickster, etc. lamar wrestles with feelings of self-disgust when someone points out that he has become a hero in the sense that he rescued tasha and malik from certain death [or undeath if you choose]. however, before the zombies started roaming the streets, lamar had gone against everything he stood for when he robbed a car dealership to pay his bills after being laid off from his factory job. he consequently can't see himself as a hero because he had done something characteristically unheroic.
although dead sea isn't terribly frightening, it does it's job as a zombie book by making you think "oh crap, what if that actually happened??" this is the second brian keene book i've read [i've previously reviewed the rising] and this wasn't the greatest of the two, but still worth reading.
rating: 3/5
recommendations: the rising by brian keene. also, the walking dead trade paperbacks by robert kirkman.
