Brian Keene - Last Call For Questions
Remember, if you've ever wanted to ask master of horror writer like Brian Keene a question, write it down below in the comments section, and it could become a part of the interview tonight.
Look out for the entire interview to be posted here very soon. In the meant time, I offer you a review of The Conqueror Worms, which I wrote when the novel first came out in 2006. See you all on the other side.
REVIEWING THE CONQUEROR
WORMS
So what do you do
when it begins to rain and never stops? What do you do when you
watch the floods come while the Earth is ravaged with the most
catastrophic storms in human history?
You watch the world
become blackened in a global power outage. Cities and entire
countries are overtaken by a new wrath unlike anything even the
heartiest of pessimists could have imagined. You lose touch with the
media and information beyond your own backyard stops, leaving you
alone to wonder if you are the last person left alive on the planet.
What do you do when
the only solace you have is to find some shelter, some dry earth in
which to wait things out, only to find that it’s what’s beneath
that earth that holds the biggest terror of all?
In Brian Keene’s
world of The Conqueror Worms nowhere is safe and everything is left
to chance. The only hope remaining is how its cast of characters
deal with the apocalyptic horror they’ve been dealt. This is
arguably the best book Keene has put out since the last one.
Seriously, it seems that as Brian Keene matures as an individual, so
too does he mature as a writer. Not to take anything away from
Brian’s previous novels, but in “Worms”, he truly goes the
extra mile to stretch the boundaries of our perspectives towards the
human condition that challenges us all. It’s with this matured
perspective that reflects through his cast of characters. Sure, none
of us are quite as challenged as Teddy and the rest of the people in
TCW, but I think many of us will be able to relate to these
believable characters to certain extent as we relate their
tribulations to some of the ones that we’ve been faced with
throughout our lives.
It’s evident
that Brian is not a writer who chooses to slip into a comfortable
zone of spinning out “safe” stories that we as readers have come
to expect from him. Sure, we all demand the same element of
intensity and terror that we have come to love from this author but
with “Worms”, it’s clear that Brian’s craft is evolving at a
breakneck capacity and this particular reviewer couldn’t be more
thrilled at the prospect
Brian doesn’t
waste a single word, description or bit of dialogue on any page here.
He makes everything count with expert ability that will have you
gripping the arm of your favourate reading chair one minute, and
drawn to fear and sympathy on behalf of Teddy and his companions the
next. I even found myself laughing out loud on more than a few
occasions. Not a single chord of emotion is left untapped.
It all starts off
in the hands of Teddy Garnett, an elderly southern man in his
eighties and the narrator of this story. We are drawn into Teddy’s
mind from the first page and fast become as entwined in the story as
possible without getting wet and dirty ourselves.
What begins with
the odd discovery of worms piled thick in Teddy’s West Virginian
carport soon escalates into pure hell as the flood waters only prove
to be window dressing for worse things to come. A squirming mass of
worms is one thing, but worms as big as cows? And what of the things
that lurk in the sea? And the strangeness doesn't stop there. When
Teddy’s best friend catches up with him they wonder if they are the
mountain’s sole survivors. Searching for others, they only find
their crazy, conspiracy theorist neighbour, Earl, who runs them off
his property and almost ends their lives with a shotgun. And when a
chopper is shot down from the sky, they meet their new friends and
discover just how insane their world has gotten as stories are told
of monstrous evil that was only suppose to have lived in the land of
lore. With the fate of the world in the palm of an unknown, unseen,
and unforgiving force, anything can happen and in the case of TCW, it
often does.
Is this the end of
the world or something far worse? You’ll have to read the book to
find out although one thing is for certain: This book will have your
skin crawling and your mind racing for answers right up until you
turn that last page. You’ll never look upon the ground after a
rain storm the same way again once you’ve experienced the world of
The Conqueror Worms.
You can still snag a copy of this and other Keene books HERE. See you on the other side, folks.
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