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kj8s's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
merlendechien's review against another edition
5.0
People piece the dead together to make and train as servents. Soon they fear an uprising for the undead who still think and have feelings. I love this book. It is sad to stand with the un-dead but a great read.
mrdavid205's review against another edition
5.0
This is the third Simon Clark novel I have read this year and the third one I have thoroughly enjoyed. The style and intellectual base, in my opinion, confirms him as the best horror writer in the UK in the last 20 years. His work reminds me of James Herbert in his combination of visceral, sometimes stomach turning horror with very interesting observations about the human condition. His vehicle here is a group of reanimated humans who are a modern version of the Frankenstein myth. They have been brought back to life to serve humans and are subservient to them in all circumstances until Dominion is reborn. From the start he is prepared to do the unthinkable and harm human beings in extreme circumstances, all the while being sure that he has a destiny far beyond his limited horizons. This book is fascinating, thought provoking and superbly writtem. If you love modern horror this is a must read.
buildhergender's review against another edition
4.0
I think this or Stir of Echos might be the first Simon Clark book that I have read.
The book is quite entertaining and it goes in ways you would not expect it to. What I thought would happen when I first started reading the book was totally different than the ending, yet I liked the ending a lot better than any I had thought would happen.
Spoiler
The book has a happy ending and this ending is that everyone is violently murdered.
In the future humanity has found out how to revive human beings after they die. The resurrected human being has great strength, enhanced immunity to damage, and are slightly programmed. The programming is mentioned and the best I can gather they are a modified version of Asimov's laws of robotics. They are not allowed to listen to humans and must obey them, even if the human in question tells them to jump off a cliff to their death...well second death. At first this is seen as a herald of a time of cheap labor as the resurrected can work for a lot longer than normal humans and can survive on food and water that would kill a human. Besides the rules placed on them they are sentient and do feel pain. So they are zombie slaves sorta. Soon however distaste leads to the practice being banned in all countries but the unnamed country of the book. It has faced economic sanctions and it's economy has gone into the toilet for it. The general people do not understand why the government is still making these undead, where they are getting the bodies from, or where they are sending them as they are not being put to use in the country. All they see is that because their government still doing this practice their country is dying.
The book starts with a undead named Dominion waking up in a revive chamber while a revolution is going on. Still fresh from the process with most of his mind still settling he watches as others of his kind are tortured to death. He runs from the building despite being told to stop. Outside in the woods he meets others of his kind who have escaped. One of them was the doctor in charge of Dominion's resurrection and he states that Dominion was different because he woke up while still in the revitalize chamber, something that has never been done before.
Dominion continues to show his difference by killing soldiers that get in his group way. This upsets his whole group as they are conditioned to never disobey or hurt humans. For a while his group wanders the country side slowly losing numbers through encounters with humans. The group has figured that they might be the last of their kind alive and that all they are doing is delaying the inevitable. Still they follow Dominion.
Eventually Dominion leads them to a small town that is at the base of a hill that has a castle. Entering the town Dominion demands food and wrecks a few vehicles on his way through. A woman, the daughter of the mayor, joins his group because despite being undead she thinks these people are more alive than the town. With what food they can carry Dominion leads them to the castle and locks the doors.
For a while there is an uneasy truce between the humans and the undead. Meanwhile Dominion starts to appear to break down. He is confused and lines are appearing on his body that seem to indicate that rather than being raised from a full human he was made out of a bunch of people, a Frankenstein like monster.
During his breakdown the doctor and the mayors daughter have sex and fall in love, in that order and yes it seems like necrophilia as it is repeatedly mentioned how war the woman feels to the doctor. A few of the undead are mysteriously killed until it is shown that one of the undead has been killing his own. He was an administrator of the reviving station and he feels it's his duty to end it all. Dominion despite being hurt brutally attacks the man and kills him. Then he sends two of his group back to the reviving building to pick up a portable revive chamber. They come back and he puts the man back in it. The man comes out of the process a bit more saner and fills in the gaps that are in Dominion's memory of his predeath life.
The government has been shipping the undead off top the Sahara desert where they have built a community. They have been able to survive on the fetid water their wells are able to bring up and have started to reclaim the desert. Humanity seeing a now habitual space tried to take it over and the undead revolted. Dominion was one of their warriors. He was made of multiple corpses and had an enlarged brain, other brains had been grafted onto this. There was a mission he was supposed to do in this country but he had died before he was able to start. The administrator had snuck him into the building to have him revived again so that he could fulfill the mission.
It is then that Dominion remembers his mission. He walks into the town and grabs a fishing net. One end of it is tied to a dock. Without warning he walks to the other end of the beach and walks out to the water. This entraps a lot of villagers who were crowding around him. He drowns them all. Then returning to his group he kills them one by one snapping their necks.
In the epilogue it is shown that his mission was to turn anyone he could into an undead. But not a normal undead, but instead one free of the rules that they usually had instilled in them. This is why he killed his group so they could be revived without the rules. They then continue his mission killing and reviving people with the hope that once they get enough of the population converted they will no longer be seen as monsters but as family since pretty soon everyone will be closely related to at least one of the undead. Soon the world will be converted into a world where Death has no Dominion (See what he did there?) The plan shows promise as the mayor's daughter turns up with her son, yes the doctor's son, and asks to be killed so she can join the doctor in his work.
The book is quite entertaining and it goes in ways you would not expect it to. What I thought would happen when I first started reading the book was totally different than the ending, yet I liked the ending a lot better than any I had thought would happen.
Spoiler
The book has a happy ending and this ending is that everyone is violently murdered.
In the future humanity has found out how to revive human beings after they die. The resurrected human being has great strength, enhanced immunity to damage, and are slightly programmed. The programming is mentioned and the best I can gather they are a modified version of Asimov's laws of robotics. They are not allowed to listen to humans and must obey them, even if the human in question tells them to jump off a cliff to their death...well second death. At first this is seen as a herald of a time of cheap labor as the resurrected can work for a lot longer than normal humans and can survive on food and water that would kill a human. Besides the rules placed on them they are sentient and do feel pain. So they are zombie slaves sorta. Soon however distaste leads to the practice being banned in all countries but the unnamed country of the book. It has faced economic sanctions and it's economy has gone into the toilet for it. The general people do not understand why the government is still making these undead, where they are getting the bodies from, or where they are sending them as they are not being put to use in the country. All they see is that because their government still doing this practice their country is dying.
The book starts with a undead named Dominion waking up in a revive chamber while a revolution is going on. Still fresh from the process with most of his mind still settling he watches as others of his kind are tortured to death. He runs from the building despite being told to stop. Outside in the woods he meets others of his kind who have escaped. One of them was the doctor in charge of Dominion's resurrection and he states that Dominion was different because he woke up while still in the revitalize chamber, something that has never been done before.
Dominion continues to show his difference by killing soldiers that get in his group way. This upsets his whole group as they are conditioned to never disobey or hurt humans. For a while his group wanders the country side slowly losing numbers through encounters with humans. The group has figured that they might be the last of their kind alive and that all they are doing is delaying the inevitable. Still they follow Dominion.
Eventually Dominion leads them to a small town that is at the base of a hill that has a castle. Entering the town Dominion demands food and wrecks a few vehicles on his way through. A woman, the daughter of the mayor, joins his group because despite being undead she thinks these people are more alive than the town. With what food they can carry Dominion leads them to the castle and locks the doors.
For a while there is an uneasy truce between the humans and the undead. Meanwhile Dominion starts to appear to break down. He is confused and lines are appearing on his body that seem to indicate that rather than being raised from a full human he was made out of a bunch of people, a Frankenstein like monster.
During his breakdown the doctor and the mayors daughter have sex and fall in love, in that order and yes it seems like necrophilia as it is repeatedly mentioned how war the woman feels to the doctor. A few of the undead are mysteriously killed until it is shown that one of the undead has been killing his own. He was an administrator of the reviving station and he feels it's his duty to end it all. Dominion despite being hurt brutally attacks the man and kills him. Then he sends two of his group back to the reviving building to pick up a portable revive chamber. They come back and he puts the man back in it. The man comes out of the process a bit more saner and fills in the gaps that are in Dominion's memory of his predeath life.
The government has been shipping the undead off top the Sahara desert where they have built a community. They have been able to survive on the fetid water their wells are able to bring up and have started to reclaim the desert. Humanity seeing a now habitual space tried to take it over and the undead revolted. Dominion was one of their warriors. He was made of multiple corpses and had an enlarged brain, other brains had been grafted onto this. There was a mission he was supposed to do in this country but he had died before he was able to start. The administrator had snuck him into the building to have him revived again so that he could fulfill the mission.
It is then that Dominion remembers his mission. He walks into the town and grabs a fishing net. One end of it is tied to a dock. Without warning he walks to the other end of the beach and walks out to the water. This entraps a lot of villagers who were crowding around him. He drowns them all. Then returning to his group he kills them one by one snapping their necks.
In the epilogue it is shown that his mission was to turn anyone he could into an undead. But not a normal undead, but instead one free of the rules that they usually had instilled in them. This is why he killed his group so they could be revived without the rules. They then continue his mission killing and reviving people with the hope that once they get enough of the population converted they will no longer be seen as monsters but as family since pretty soon everyone will be closely related to at least one of the undead. Soon the world will be converted into a world where Death has no Dominion (See what he did there?) The plan shows promise as the mayor's daughter turns up with her son, yes the doctor's son, and asks to be killed so she can join the doctor in his work.
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