The Rising (Novel)
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The Rising is the first book in a series of zombie-themed horror novels written by author Brian Keene. This title won the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel in 2003. The Rising was optioned for both film and video game adaptation in 2004.
Plot introduction
The dead are returning to life as intelligent zombies. Trapped by the undead, escape seems impossible for Jim Thurmond. But Jim’s young son is alive and in dire peril hundreds of miles away. Despite overwhelming odds, Jim vows to find him— or die trying.
Joined by an elderly preacher, a guilt-ridden scientist, and a determined ex-prostitute, Jim embarks on a cross-country rescue mission. They must battle both the living and the living dead. And for Jim and his companions, an even greater evil awaits them at the end of their journey. This is the time of...The Rising.
Plot summary
The story starts off in the aftermath of a secret particle accelerator experiment. Apparently the experiment has opened some sort of interdimensional rift allowing these demons to possess the dead. As the dead come back to life, we discover that the zombies plague that results isn't like any other plague shown in movies like Night of the Living Dead or Dawn of the Dead.
Jim Thurmond is a construction worker living in West Virginia. Hiding away in a bomb shelter he constructed in case the world ended from Y2K, Thurmond now uses it to hold off packs of roving zombies, one of which is his recently deceased second wife. Jim laments his situation. Worried to the very core that he'll never see his son Danny, who is living with Jim's first wife in upstate New Jersey. Distraught, Jim considers suicide when something amazing happens. Jim's cellphone, low on battery power, rings with a message from his son Danny. Danny whispers into the phone that things are bad where he is at but that he and his mother are currently hiding from the zombies. Jim's suicidal thoughts turn around into a new purpose; rescue Danny. Jim packs some supplies from the shelter and heads out into an apocalyptic United States overrun with gruesome sights. Jim fights his way out. Killing his undead neighbors and even his undead second wife, who taunts him with his unborn daughter. The moment he leaves the shelter, Jim is on the run. He quickly discovers that the undead in this world possess the ability to think, drive cars, use weapons, and set traps for the living. New Jersey looks further and further away with every passing second.
Jim eventually meets Martin, an elderly black minister. The two join forces to find Danny and soon run into plenty of life threatening situations, everything from packs of roving zombies to backwoods cannibals seeking some extra food to undead wildlife. At the same time, Frankie, a down on her luck heroin user and woman of the night who narrowly escapes disaster in the Baltimore Zoo also begins a trek out of the cities and into the country. Frankie eventually meets up with Jim and Martin. Together they help Jim reach his destination, which is his son in New Jersey. Meanwhile, Professor Baker, the scientist responsible for creating the zombie outbreak, is lamenting over what he has done. His assistant, who has killed himself, is possessed by Ob, the leader of the demons that are infesting our world and taking over the dead. Ob demands to be released from the room that Professor Baker is holding him in. We also keep tabs on one of the scientists in charge of the particle accelerator as he too seeks his destiny in a world full of the undead. You know all of these people will come together at some point in the novel; seeing how Keene pulls it off is the fun part. The conclusion to the story delivers plenty of gory violence, but also gives us an ending that raises more questions than answers.
Quotes
- "We are your masters. Demons, your kind called us. Djinn. Monsters. We are the source of your legends - the reason you still fear the dark."
- "This is our world now. Surrounded on all sides by the dead."
- "The color of death isn't black. It's red."
Story analysis
The Rising draws some aspects from George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead and Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later. The theme of the story is more than the dead being reanimated and going on murderous, cannabalistic killing sprees. As in 28 Days Later the reason for the outbreak is biological. Either a satellite or some biological agent comes to earth, people are exposed and the dead start walking again. In 28 Days Later, it's a PETA liberation front that accidentally releases the virus "Rage" that brings Britain to its knees.In The Rising the agent isn't biological, but is spiritual. Demons, unwittingly unleashed from a place called, "The Void". Neither Heaven, nor Hell, but a place that is devoid of life and quite cold and empty. It is only after a mysterious particle acceleration experiment opens a dimensional doorway between The Void and our world that all hell breaks loose. The demons are part of something called the Sissquism. Their leader is Obot, or Ob for short. Obot has a long history in the biblical sense. In Morton Smith's book, "Jesus the Magician: Charlatan or Son of God?" Smith states the following of Ob:
"The 'obot (plural of 'ob) are a mysterious class of beings, commonly said to be 'spirits of the dead,' but probably some sort of underworld deities. Although they are in the realm of the dead, and speak from the earth in whispering voices (Isaiah 8.19; 29.4), they are associated with deities and are referred to as objects of worship to whom Israelites sometimes turn, abandoning Yahweh."
Even back in ancient times, these spirits where maliciously guiding, directing our lives, as stated in this passage:
"These 'obot can enter men and live in them, evidently for a long time, so that the man possessed is known as 'onewho has an 'ob' (I Sam. 28.7), more specifically, 'one who has in him an 'obot'. The priestly law said such persons were to be stoned (Lev. 20.27). The most famous of them is 'the witch of Endor' to whom King Saul went when Yahweh refused to speak to him (I Sam. 28.8). Saul said to her, 'Do magic for me with the 'ob and bring up (the spirit of) the man I shall name.' Evidently here permanent, personal 'ob was not the same as the spirit who was to be brought up just this once." "Belief in 'obot or similar powers seems to have lived on in Palestine to at least the third century A.D., when it is attested by some...rabbinic passages..."
Editions
- Ultra Edition Hardcover (Delirium Books, April 2003): Limited to 6 signed and numbered copies, bound in leather and packaged in a leather hinge box. 324 pages; Dimensions (inches): 1.25 x 8.50 x 5.75.
- Leather-Bound Hardcover (Delirium Books, April 2003): Limited to 26 signed and numbered copies. 324 pages; Dimensions (inches): 1.25 x 8.50 x 5.75.
- Limited Edition Hardcover (Delirium Books, April 2003): Limited to 300 signed and numbered copies. 324 pages; Dimensions (inches): 1.25 x 8.50 x 5.75; ISBN 1929653417.
- Mass Market Paperback (Leisure Books, Jan. 2004): The title on the front cover is raised (embossed). 336 pages; Dimensions (inches): 0.95 x 6.78 x 4.24; ISBN 0843952016.
- Mass Market Paperback, Second Printing (Leisure Books, 2005): The title on the front cover is flat (non-embossed). 336 pages; Dimensions (inches): 0.95 x 6.78 x 4.24; ISBN 0843952016.
- Mass Market Paperback, Third Printing (Leisure Books, 2006): The title on the front cover is flat (non-embossed). 336 pages; Dimensions (inches): 0.95 x 6.78 x 4.24; ISBN 0843952016.
Trivia
- A comic book adaptation, written by Keene, was licensed by the now defunct company Indie Gods. The scripts and artwork that were completed will be published in 2006 by Delirium Books under the title .
- Author Richard Laymon, who died two years before The Rising was released, wrote a blurb used for promotion of the book. The blurb was written in 2000 and based on the first draft of the novel.
- There is an alternate ending to The Rising that was published in the Lettered Edition of City Of The Dead. In it, Jim Thurmond enters the house to find his son, Danny, has turned into a zombie.
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