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Risen
Welcome to Anderson. It's pretty quiet here and that's the way we like it. One thing, though. Madge Duffy murdered her husband John last week, or thought she did. She spent the night in jail but then John walked out of the morgue none the worse for wear. And there's a bullet hole in Deputy Haws' shirt that he can't explain. Something's going on in this town of ours. Something that makes your skin crawl and your teeth grind in the night. I don't know what it is, but I'll tell you this: It scares me. One helluva read. Don't start this book unless you've got an evening free! – George Beahm, author of The Stephen King Companion
407 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published May 1, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
December 15, 2008
From the back cover:
Nothing much happens in the town of Anderson. The only folks who see any excitement are the ones who hit th road after graduation.But things are about to change...
DAY ONE
Madge Duffy kills her abusive drunk of a husband by slitting his throat from ear to ear. The local Sheriff's deputy dies at the hands of an enraged teen-ager. Farmer's wife Irma Klempner goes berserk with a butcher knife.
DAY TWO
John Duffy walks out of the morgue without a scratch on him and goes home to his wife. Deputy Haws walks into the diner bright and early, and greets the boy who killed him. And a dark figure waits patiently for his time to come. Soon, the people of Anderson will belong to him. And his vengeance will live forever.
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I thought this was pretty well written. There's bits of black humor mixed thorughout which meant the author wasn't taking himself too seriously and it made the reading light and easy. I would have rated it higher but I found the ending to be weak after everything that had happened earlier in the story.
Nothing much happens in the town of Anderson. The only folks who see any excitement are the ones who hit th road after graduation.But things are about to change...
DAY ONE
Madge Duffy kills her abusive drunk of a husband by slitting his throat from ear to ear. The local Sheriff's deputy dies at the hands of an enraged teen-ager. Farmer's wife Irma Klempner goes berserk with a butcher knife.
DAY TWO
John Duffy walks out of the morgue without a scratch on him and goes home to his wife. Deputy Haws walks into the diner bright and early, and greets the boy who killed him. And a dark figure waits patiently for his time to come. Soon, the people of Anderson will belong to him. And his vengeance will live forever.
******************************************************************************
I thought this was pretty well written. There's bits of black humor mixed thorughout which meant the author wasn't taking himself too seriously and it made the reading light and easy. I would have rated it higher but I found the ending to be weak after everything that had happened earlier in the story.
March 12, 2009
While I am finding it hard to define as a classic zombie horror. The elements portrayed within this novel will satisfy the need for a new kind of thrill.
The town of Anderson is forever changed by the RISEN. There is great story-telling that kept me interested to the very end. Brandt the small town reporter, Peg the small town waitress, her Annie in a coma and her teenage son Tom. His friends. Deputy Haws and Rev. Small. There are many colorful characters that share the spotlight with the main characters that enhance a rather unique way of using the zombie genre to bring to life a tale.
The town of Anderson is forever changed by the RISEN. There is great story-telling that kept me interested to the very end. Brandt the small town reporter, Peg the small town waitress, her Annie in a coma and her teenage son Tom. His friends. Deputy Haws and Rev. Small. There are many colorful characters that share the spotlight with the main characters that enhance a rather unique way of using the zombie genre to bring to life a tale.
July 9, 2020
Reading horror started for me around age nine of ten when I bought a copy of Dean Koont z Phantoms and David Robbins The Wereling at a local Bells (yes that Belks). Talk about hooking this impressionable kid like a fish. Over my youthful years, this kid would hit the stores with limited funds and agonize over a twenty book selection of horror but only able to pick out one or two. I loved the cheesy skeleton adorned covers and ditto for the actual stories themselves. As I got older and the horror i grew up loving turned into something called splatterpunk, my interests went elsewhere.
Now as a man in my fifties, whose tastes now runs more towards espionage or crime\assassin thrillers, I still have in my possession those old horror novels from mostly the 80s and 90s, some from early 2000s. My nostalgia began speaking to me and I jumped back into re-reading these books i loved back then. The nostalgia proved stronger than the quality of the writing unfortunately. I couldn't believe how lousy the vast majority actually were. I loved these books, what happened? Maybe tastes do change over time. But then , when I was about to give up, I found Risen by J. Knight. Holy holy what a book. Not only did it being the nostalgia back but the writing was fantastic and this little horror nugget was amazing.
Let's just say that where most of the other disappointments from my younger years have vacated my keeper shelf, Risen is staying put right beside Phantoms (still love it) and a few others that made the cut. Thank you mr. Knight for keeping the nostalgia alive.
Now as a man in my fifties, whose tastes now runs more towards espionage or crime\assassin thrillers, I still have in my possession those old horror novels from mostly the 80s and 90s, some from early 2000s. My nostalgia began speaking to me and I jumped back into re-reading these books i loved back then. The nostalgia proved stronger than the quality of the writing unfortunately. I couldn't believe how lousy the vast majority actually were. I loved these books, what happened? Maybe tastes do change over time. But then , when I was about to give up, I found Risen by J. Knight. Holy holy what a book. Not only did it being the nostalgia back but the writing was fantastic and this little horror nugget was amazing.
Let's just say that where most of the other disappointments from my younger years have vacated my keeper shelf, Risen is staying put right beside Phantoms (still love it) and a few others that made the cut. Thank you mr. Knight for keeping the nostalgia alive.
November 8, 2018
I was pleasantly surprised with this book . It started out slow, but I am glad I stuck with it. A good horror story, with minimal gore. I especially liked this book for its ending (sometimes horror novels have a weak ending, this one did not...) Very strong ending, and made me give this book 4 stars when for most of the book I would have gone with three.
Tom is an engaging character, although we don't get a whole deep look into his psyche, Brant - we get a little more depth. The female characters were pretty flat though.
Tom is an engaging character, although we don't get a whole deep look into his psyche, Brant - we get a little more depth. The female characters were pretty flat though.
March 31, 2018
I was not entirely sure what to expect from this book when I picked it up at my favourite used book store. It seems from the description to be a zombie novel, but it's not, at least not entirely. The first half of the book would have been a 2 and the last half a 4 star. The author has a unique premise and some interesting characters. Pretty good horror novel.
January 24, 2008
J. Knight, Risen (2001, Warner/iPublish)
Fifty pages into Risen, I was ready to throw it to the dustbunnies. But I kept going, and I'm glad I did. I think.
There's nothing overly original here-- the inhabitants of a small town in the middle of nowhere find, one morning, that the recently deceased are, in the words of a now-famous newscaster, returning to life. (No eating of the living this time, however.) The recently-deceased have one goal, to convert their still-living friends and neighbors to their own state of Risen-hood (thus the book's title), thus making the town one big happy recently deceased family.
It's a beautiful metaphor, and one that is simple enough to be used for any mindless process of conversion. Knight gives a number of strong implications she's looking at organized religion, but it doesn't take much stretching to put it into other contexts. There is a good deal to be said for the zombie-as-metaphor line, and all of it can be said about this book. There's also enough scenes of sheer gross-out to keep the horror reader happy, especially once the ball gets rolling (which happens about seventy pages in). Knight also has a deft enough hand at plot twists, especially the wonderful ones where the reader knows more than the characters in the novel.
Where Risen falters is in Knight's writing style. The book has been rather aggressively marketed (via email) as "if you like Stephen King..." Every avid reader knows that "if you like..." is second only to "in the tradition of..." for setting off warning bells. In this case, blatant comparisons to Stephen King only serve to highlight the differences (some subtle, some not so) that put King firmly in the pantheon of genre fiction writers. Most of them can be encapsulated in the statement that King regularly transcends genre with his writing ability, while Knight does not. This is not a bad thing in and of itself; genre writing is certainly capable of being good work, and it is (for the most part) in this case. Just don't let the marketing campaign get to you.
In any case, I have digressed. There are a number of places where Knight's style jars, small errors in judgment which add up over time. The one that sticks with me (I finished the book about a week ago) is Kngiht's inability to gauge where to stop in drawing a simile for maximum effectiveness. If you say something's like a diamond, let the reader draw the proper conclusions; no need to write out the ways in which the simile works. It's not a big thing if it happens once or twice in the span of a novel, especially one that runs four hundred pages, but the repetition drives the point home. A good editor would be able to fix such problems with minimal effort.
It's a good read if you're a hardcore fan of the horror genre. Others should probably approach with caution. ** 1/2
Fifty pages into Risen, I was ready to throw it to the dustbunnies. But I kept going, and I'm glad I did. I think.
There's nothing overly original here-- the inhabitants of a small town in the middle of nowhere find, one morning, that the recently deceased are, in the words of a now-famous newscaster, returning to life. (No eating of the living this time, however.) The recently-deceased have one goal, to convert their still-living friends and neighbors to their own state of Risen-hood (thus the book's title), thus making the town one big happy recently deceased family.
It's a beautiful metaphor, and one that is simple enough to be used for any mindless process of conversion. Knight gives a number of strong implications she's looking at organized religion, but it doesn't take much stretching to put it into other contexts. There is a good deal to be said for the zombie-as-metaphor line, and all of it can be said about this book. There's also enough scenes of sheer gross-out to keep the horror reader happy, especially once the ball gets rolling (which happens about seventy pages in). Knight also has a deft enough hand at plot twists, especially the wonderful ones where the reader knows more than the characters in the novel.
Where Risen falters is in Knight's writing style. The book has been rather aggressively marketed (via email) as "if you like Stephen King..." Every avid reader knows that "if you like..." is second only to "in the tradition of..." for setting off warning bells. In this case, blatant comparisons to Stephen King only serve to highlight the differences (some subtle, some not so) that put King firmly in the pantheon of genre fiction writers. Most of them can be encapsulated in the statement that King regularly transcends genre with his writing ability, while Knight does not. This is not a bad thing in and of itself; genre writing is certainly capable of being good work, and it is (for the most part) in this case. Just don't let the marketing campaign get to you.
In any case, I have digressed. There are a number of places where Knight's style jars, small errors in judgment which add up over time. The one that sticks with me (I finished the book about a week ago) is Kngiht's inability to gauge where to stop in drawing a simile for maximum effectiveness. If you say something's like a diamond, let the reader draw the proper conclusions; no need to write out the ways in which the simile works. It's not a big thing if it happens once or twice in the span of a novel, especially one that runs four hundred pages, but the repetition drives the point home. A good editor would be able to fix such problems with minimal effort.
It's a good read if you're a hardcore fan of the horror genre. Others should probably approach with caution. ** 1/2
April 28, 2011
Very entertaining easy-read about dead people coming back to life and taking over a town (the undead are very hard to pick out by the not-dead yet). Quite Stephen King-ish but without the really dark humor. Creative story, great Kindle value (1.99). At first it took me awhile to realize the time of the story had to have been in 80's. The book never said, but cell phones did not appear to be an option so that's what I'm guessing. Also enjoyed some of the "out-takes" at the end...stories of some of the towns people that didn't make the final cut.
July 30, 2012
This is a good story. Mr. Knight creates memorable characters. I also loved the short stories at the end of the novel. They didn't make the final cut into the novel, but I'm glad they didn't stay on the cutting room floor. This novel never really explains (no spoiler here) the Risen. I came away with "is this how it ends?"... feeling. The more I thought about it...the more I realized...it's the irony of how they would meet their death..
May 12, 2013
This book was a zombie story, but seemed unlike most other zombie stories I'd heard about (I haven't ever actually read a zombie story). The newly created zombies in this book seem just like they were before they were killed/died. Other non-zombies are amazed that they came back from the dead, but are unaware of how dangerous they really are - sort of a Trojan horse type of danger. The characters are interesting and the plot moves along briskly.
December 12, 2007
This is definitely a different type of zombie novel. No flesh-eating mindless corpses here. These zombies can die every day any matter of ways and will just keep coming back. As more and more townspeople are turned, it's up to a few people to piece together whether eternal life is all it's made out to be and how to stop themselves from being turned.
October 16, 2012
A huge build-up to a very, very dramatic, thrilling end. That's the most basic way of describing this book. It was a bit slow at times, because I had to surpress my urge to just cut through bits. However, over-all not a bad story. It was definitely thrilling. Recommend, yes...definitely recommend to those that enjoy thrillers.
April 28, 2014
I was an interesting book. I did what to put it down a couple times though. There were spots where I skipped a couple of paragraphs because of the gross factor for me. I would have liked a little more background of the Seth character. The book to me seemed to fan out in the middle with all the going on in the town that might have been skipped.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 29, 2007
Sometimes listed as a zombie novel. It is not, it is more along the lines of a Body Snatchers type novel.
February 8, 2008
amazing no each time i read this book i love it more.
November 12, 2010
Excellent zombie story.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews