A question for Brian Keene readers.

Is Dead Sea set in the same 'world' as The Rising and City of the Dead?

I know it's not a direct sequel, but would you list it with the other two as a series, or is it just a completely unrelated book that happens to be about zombies done by Brian Keene?

I'm butting in here. I haven't read Keene. Do you recommend him?

So far, I only tried The Rising and I hated it. However, a lot of other people loved the book.

I've picked up the rest of his paperbacks because I've heard such raves, but honestly I haven't read them yet. Dead Sea and The Conqueror Worms sound good to me and beeg seems to be liking Dark Hollow (touchstone is wrong for this one. Sorry!) so far.

I'd started the thread because I saw that someone had linked The Rising and City of the Dead as a series (one is a sequel to the other). I was going to add Dead Sea to the series, but since I haven't read the books I don't know if the one is linked to the other two.

The way the books are written it seems as though they should all go in one series ... it really confused me so I looked it up and Brian Keene posted an explanation on his blog and forum. I couldnt find the original blog post but here is a repost he put on his message board: http://www.briankeene.com/forum/index.php?topic=10.15
========================================================================================
A TALE OF TWO FRANKIES

Warning: The following contains spoilers for Dead Sea, City of the Dead, The Rising, and 4X4. Proceed at your own risk.

Many new readers who are not familiar with my underlying mythos have recently asked, "If Dead Sea takes place in a different world than The Rising and City of the Dead, then why is Frankie and the zoo referenced in it?"

Frankie first appeared in a short story called "Wild Kingdom". The story was co-written with Coop and published in a book called 4X4. (The cover to that book is now tattooed across half my back). In "Wild Kingdom", a disease called Hamelin's Revenge is reanimating the dead---turning them into mindless, slow-moving zombies who feast on the living. The disease starts with the rats but soon jumps species and infects humans. Frankie, a heroin-addicted hooker who is on the run from a gang of pissed off drug dealers, takes refuge in a zoo---a zoo occupied with zombie animals. At the end of the story, she becomes infected when she nurses a zombie baby.

Frankie appears next in The Rising and City of the Dead. The character is similar---and yet she's not. The zoo scene is similar---and yet it's not. The zombies, of course, are not the victims of Hamelin's Revenge, Instead, they are the result of demonic possession via Ob and the Siqqusim (for a complete background on Ob and the Siqqusim, I refer you to 'The Etymology of Ob', from Running with the Devil). At the end of City of the Dead, she dies in her sleep beneath New York City.

Frankie appears again in Dead Sea, albeit anecdotal. We learn that she was hooked up with Mitch's son. We also get a re-telling of "Wild Kingdom" from another character's perspective.

So, to recap: Even though they are the same woman, the Frankie in 4X4 and Dead Sea is different than the Frankie in The Rising and City of the Dead. And to further blow your mind---the Frankie in 4X4 is different than the Frankie in Dead Sea.

Three different Frankies. Three different worlds.

And yet, they are similar.

Author conceit? No, not really. From Day One, every piece of fiction I've written has been tied-in to my underlying mythos. I call that mythos The Labyrinth. Out of respect for my readers, I have labored very hard to keep it subtle. The inherent danger in a mythos is that you risk turning off new readers who would otherwise try your work. Therefore, knowledge of one of my books is not required to enjoy another. You shouldn't have to read Fear of Gravity to understand Dark Hollow. You don't need to be familiar with Terminal to dig Ghoul. You aren't required to read Jack's Magic Beans to understand the character motivations in The Conqueror Worms.

And yet---all of them are indeed connected by The Labyrinth.

The Labyrinth is an other-dimensional space used by beings other than ourselves (although sometimes humans do indeed go inside it) to travel through time and space, between worlds, and between those world's alternate realities. It's a series of back alley short cuts through the multiverse.

In this mythos, just as there are different planets in the universe, there are also different versions of those planets. Alternate realities, if you will. The different membranes of the ever-popular string theory, each one containing a different version of Earth. On one of those earths, Hamelin's Revenge-infected zombies might be rampaging across the globe. On another, it might be Siqqusim zombies. On a third Earth, it might start raining and never stop. On a fourth, maybe a comet hits the planet and wipes us out.

Three different Frankies. Three different worlds.

Two worlds ravaged by Hamelin's Revenge. One destroyed by the Siqqusim.

And there are others.

You'll learn more about this, and how these world's overlap, in the forthcoming Tequila's Sunrise and Ghost Walk.

And soon, you'll learn what happens when these worlds collide.

I suppose comparisons to Stephen King's Dark Tower series are unavoidable, but in truth, my main influence for this was always Marvel Superhero Secret Wars and DC Comics' Crisis on Infinite Earths. I enjoyed both as a teenager, and just like Steve Gerber's Defenders and Man-Thing, Jack Kirby's Captain America and Kamandi, and other comic books of that era, they had a profound impact on my adult work.

So there you have it. If you dig that sort of thing, then you'll probably enjoy this. If you don't dig that sort of thing, you have my promise that these ties that bind will remain subtle and won't impact your casual enjoyment of the books.

In either case, thanks, as always, for reading.

PS: Remember when The Conqueror Worms came out, and people shouted, "All you did was re-write a novella from 4X4?

Wrong.

Two different version of Teddy Garnett on two different worlds.

Xombie,

Thanks for the post. Having read all that my definite answer is 'I dunno'. I'm not going to add Dead Sea to The Rising's series until I've read all three (judging by my first exposure to The Rising, it won't be any time soon).

Wow, I probably shouldn't have read that. I've never read any Keene books, and now I feel somewhat less tempted to. Maybe it's just me, but seeing an author spell out his Mythos that way was sort of deflating. Halfway through the entry, I was actually kind of tempted to seek his stuff out, because the idea of the three different Frankies struck me as sort of fascinating, sort of like Lovecraft or M. John Harrison's Viriconium series where events and characters seem to recurr, so you're never sure what's real.

But having it turn out that they are just parallel universe analogues--eh, well, that just sort of reminds me of why I read a lot less sci-fi than I used to when I was a kid.

Anyway, curiousity killed the cat, eh?

Curiousity certainly kills the hope that more books would straighten out/explain the similarities into a saga... I was looking forward to learning that the connections would be explained through further installments.
But it seems more like the author has a good plot idea (mythos) but not strong enough motivation or imagination to combine them in a sensical manner.
I guess Im just going to accept the books as seperate unrelated stories.

Oh well Ive come across many such instances when a book within a series is stronger alone than together, which isnt so different than this.

For me, I don't necessarily like when an author decides he needs to tie all his works together into a grand mythos. H.P. Lovecraft just sort of did it unconciously I believe. (I know that he purposely reused ideas like Cthulhu and The Necronomicon, but didn't I read somewhere that all that 'Cthulhu cycle' stuff was retroactively constructed by August Derleth?)

Stephen King is a favorite of mine, but I haven't read beyond the first two Dark Tower books. I don't mind characters from The Shining being mentioned in passing in Misery. I loved that Desperation and The Regulators play off of each other. I always thought of it as SK winking at his audience. Randal Flagg can show up as a bad guy in many seperate SK books and that is fine, but when books stop being able to stand on their own and everything i supposed to be a part of one grand story (ala Anne Rice) I don't like it.

I guess I do like for an author to create their own mythos, just keep it way back in the background.

I read all 3, "The Rising", "The City of the Dead" and "Dead Sea"

the one that is different, is the "Dead Sea". The Dead Sea is more of a George Romero style of zombies. where the Rising and "City of the Dead"(the sequal to "The Rising") is where Demons are released from an underworld or another dimension, and inhabit the dead bodies of people and are then animated zombies.

I loved all 3 books. Brian Keene has the best zombie novels.

The Rising was rather mediocre. Poor dialogue, characters, and writing. However, he managed to give the book a very epic feeling, that rivaled most 500-plus page post-apocalyptic tomes. Ghoul and The Conqueror Worms are Keene's true masterpieces.