I read Dead Sea right after The Rising. I must say the intrinsic qualities of Dead Sea were so much higher that it almost felt like Dead Sea had been written by another author who seems to have gained in maturity, exploring darker sides of the mankind's psychology. The focus is no longer so much on raw physical violence and gore than on the intimate distress of "everyday life people".
Dead Sea is the story of a group of people, among whom some characters are quite peculiar and very far from the mainstream -which makes the plot even more interesting- who happen to "tumble" onto one another in the aftermath of a behemoth city fire, fleeing the danger while simultaneously trying to evade the plague of the living deads. They make it to the sea, where they embark on a ship. The story takes us onboard too and have us share the life and struggle of the survivors.
What is so remarkable in this book is the quality of the description of the characters' personalities and their trains of thoughts. Unlike what he did in his previous books, the author apparently decided to give a much stronger focus onto the lives and doubts and wishes and, overall, what makes people's characters so subtle and fragile at the same time. With all of their flaws and weaknesses, these survivors really are attaching and credible people, and one can't help but empathize with the core group of unfortunate chaps. Thanks largely to the quality of their description by the author, those people are just like us, far from perfect. That makes the story all the more interesting as the reader can relate to them easily.
Also, death is everywhere, and credible too, as it strikes people in the very random way we are accustomed to in real life. Death spares no one: women and men, heroes and villains, kids and elders, blacks and whites, the poor and the rich... Everybody is equal in front of death. Another balanced and credible view of the world which makes the book so interesting.
There is also a strong, underlying, Romero-like criticism of many of the values that we, as a society, have established as supreme in our daily life. Religion, materialism, the military, politics, media, the police etc. do not provide any efficient material, or psychological, or ethical help in fighting a plague that is of such a magnitude. Question is: when everything falls apart around you at once, what makes you fight? Basically, the book is really about the ultimate, desperate, irreversible end of the world as we know it and how people could react in the turmoil. The evil disease is global, cureless, merciless, transmissible from species to species, mutating and adaptive. A real nightmare. Boy, I would hate to find myself living in such a world...
But the author also makes us question: what use is mankind's intimate self-preservation reflex when there is absolutely no more hope around? What makes us hope? What is hope? I have personally loved the fact that the book had me think about these things.
The icing on the cake is probably the excellent book ending, which leaves room to the reader for some personal interpretation. Depending on your mind, mood or personality, you may be drawn to see the light at the end of the tunnel or, on the contrary, find yourself in a bottomless pit, with absolutely no hope in sight.
A very good book indeed.
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