The plan is to reread all of Brian Keene’s available works in roughly the order that they were published. I’m doing it because I’m an author in need of improvement and a reader who enjoys a storyteller willing to bleed out on the page in a powerful and interesting way. I’m a fan of Keene’s work. I think there is something to be learned through this process.

You can also go back to the Introductory Post: A Gathering of Books to read more about the how and the why of this or any of my other posts up through this one and beyond by checking out the Master List of all my #BrianKeeneRevisited posts.

There is a new version of Terminal coming out soon, I believe. It’s my understanding that the author is adding back things the original publisher pushed him take out of the book. My guess is that second version will be the better story, but I read what I think is the original version for this revisit. I like this book. I do think it shows some of the struggle of a new writer in a way that The Rising and City of the Dead did not show on both sides of this release. Terminal may suffer a little by comparison, but only a little.

Very early on, this book has a Richard Backman feel to it, in my opinion. Maybe a tone like Roadwork. Like that work, Terminal has a dark cloud hanging over it. There is a mournful rawness to the narrative. The character’s mood, pain, and struggles almost become part of the setting itself, reflected in the foundry, the dirty bathroom of the bar and the dirty business coming up there, the dying sections of the town infected with poverty and crime.

Our main character Tommy has the same musical taste and love of Howard Stern as the author. Keene worked at a foundry too, borrowing from his own harrowing brush with death for the action in this story. In that instance, at least, Tommy came out better than Keene did in real life.

Tommy loves fucking with telemarketers too.

“Let me have another cigarette and I’ll tell you what happened next.” Keene does a good job of grounding the first person narrative into a framework that makes its telling make sense.

Donald Trump is mentioned. A Trump-like figure will loom large over City of the Dead which I believe Keene was writing at the same time as Terminal for part of the time.

Playing cops and robbers with his son is a brilliant piece of business in the narrative.

A couple of the monologues in the story are a little on-the-nose. In spots, they come off a bit contrived. The bulk of the dialogue and interactions are strong and make up for any perceived weaknesses I might nitpick at. In the vault, there are moments where the dialogue gets clunky. They are only moments, but were Keene writing this story today, I think those edges might have been smoothed a bit more and connected better. The fact that he came so strong with The Rising, I’m of the opinion that some of those growing pains as a developing author peeked through a little in this book instead. None of this changed my opinion that this is a good story worth reading. I’m interested to see the changes in the new version.

The power of healing is delivered and used well in the story. In addition, the costs and consequences that play out at the end are much stronger and hit harder because of that healing power and theme.

Religion and spirituality play heavy for the characters in this book. Like The Rising before, these explorations are taken very seriously. Keene forces his characters to confront and deal with their own mortality. In this, he also hints at some very dark possibilities for the afterlife.

In Sympathy for the Devil, a number of the essays covered the time period wherein Keene was working to finish Terminal and City of the Dead. Even without pulling assumptions or reading between the lines, it is clear that Brian Keene poured a lot of himself into these books to get them right and to not slack off from giving his best to readers. I believe that work and heartache come off the page as well.

My next post in this series will be City of the Dead #BrianKeeneRevisited which can be found on the Master List of all my #BrianKeeneRevisited posts. Note: The photo of Brian Keene used in the banner image of these blog posts was taken by John Urbancik and used by permission of both Keene and Urbancik.

Jay Wilburn

Jay Wilburn has a Masters Degree in Education that goes mostly unused since he quit teaching to write about zombies. Jay writes horror because he tends to find the light by facing down the darkness. His is doing well following a life saving kidney transplant. Jay is the author of Maidens of Zombie Kingdom a young adult fantasy trilogy, Lake Scatter Wood Tales adventure books for elementary and middle school readers, Vampire Christ a trilogy of political and religious satire, and The Dead Song Legend. He cowrote The Enemy Held Near, Yard Full of Bones, and The Hidden Truth with Armand Rosamilia. You can also find Jay's work in Best Horror of the Year volume 5. He is a staff writer with Dark Moon Digest, LitReactor, and the Still Water Bay series with Crystal Lake Publishing.

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