Urban Gothic

A passable thriller, but far too gorie and predictable for my tastes. Inner city personalities were, however, real and believable. The initial introduction to the house was very good, very creepy, and very believable. But for me things began to disintegrate in terms of the plot. I felt like I was

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reading a bad script for a B-rated horror movie.

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Very, very good book though I have yet to be disappointed by Brian Keene.

A group of suburban teenagers become stranded in a ghetto after their car breaks down only to come face to face with a perceived neighborhood gang. Taking shelter in an ominous, seemingly abandoned house the teens soon find

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out that a family of mutated monstrosities lives within it's walls with a delight for cannibalism. What I love about Brian Keene's writing is that the realistic decision making, or lack there of, of normal everyday people in crazy situations really comes through every time. The hero can be a coward, the best friend can throw you to the wolves, and the weakling can be the strongest of all in pursuit of survival... or they can all die horrifically while screaming and running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Great horror novel with a good pace while providing multiple perspectives on events going on in the story, not for the squeamish though. Also try Ghoul if you enjoyed this book, liked that one even more than this one.

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Not at all what I was expecting, and, originally, I was a little put down by what it had to say, as I wasn't used to it. However, over time, I got used to it, and allowed myself to enjoy the story. As for the plot, a group of deranged stoners end up inside of a rundown home where a family of

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mutants hunt them down, as a neighborhood bands together to get them to safety.

This isn't my favorite book of Keene's, but it was still an enjoyable read. A couple characterization flaws, and I really could care less for a bunch of idiots who screw themselves over to get into trouble, but some of them grew on me.

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Urban Gothic was a master piece. He had the right attitude of inner cities the dont ask dont tell mentality and that a house like this would not be so far fetched. These kids breakdown in a bad part of town and end up running into a house from some guys they thought were going to hurt then. What

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was in the house was far worse. His descriptions of the horribly deformed inhabitants was nothing short of perfect I could see them in my head like i was there. Have to read this and thank god you do not live here.

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In Keene's horror novel, Kerri and her friends thought they'd find shelter in the old house after their car breaks down in a bad neighborhood. They thought they'd be safe but they were wrong. The inhabitants of the house live in the cellar and rarely come out during the day. They don't like

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intruders and are worse than anything on the streets. Kerri and her friends will fight for their lives before daylight comes and the nightmare won't end there. This gifted author grabs the reader from the beginning with his superb story.

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Holy crap. Think Texas Chainsaw Massacre (kind of) in the hood. This book was awesome, but DO NOT attempt to read while eating. I picked this book up at my lunchtime, but 20 pages in, I had lost my appetite, and I do not have a weak stomach.

6 suburban teenagers have their car break down in a "bad"

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(read urban) part of town. They take shelter in a huge old abandoned house. Things don't go well for them after that...

Just great and creepy. In broad daylight, sitting at my desk, there was a strange noise and I jumped...I never get freaked out by books, but this one will do it.

Oh, also, don't read if you are easily offended. This book does not pull any punches!

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Six friends, white kids on their way home from a hip-hop concert, find themselves in car trouble, deep in a rundown black area of Philadelphia. The wrong choice of epithet leads to them sheltering in an abandoned old house, that contains more peril than anything they might have faced outside.

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Although Keene is a good writer who drags you along at a tremendous clip, this doesn’t stand up like his other books have and is very similar to “Castaways” (and feels more like a Richard Laymon homage, than the suggested Ed Lee). The characters are passable, the gore is good fun but the pacing is off, with far too much time spent in the dark cellars that quickly become so big the reader gets lost (and which makes one characters exit, later in the book, seem far-fetched). The mutants, generally, are well-done and their origins cleverly kept mysterious, but several speak excellent English, which sits oddly and one is called Noigel, which sounded too close to Nigel for me to take seriously. There are some good ideas, such as the house being some kind of entity itself, but these are allowed to peter out quietly. Not a bad book, by any means, but certainly not a Keene novel that I’d recommend to a first-time reader of his.

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Rating: 2.5 of 5

Inner city cannibals + trapped teenagers = lots of carnage. That's about the gist of Urban Gothic, and why I won't read it again. With horror movies, I'm a gorehound. Probably why zombie flicks are my fave. But in its literary counterpart, there has to be more than just splatter in

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order to get under my skin, to terrify me. Keene's use of smell was brilliant, though. It made the story way more shocking (and sickening) than if he'd relied solely on visuals. I gagged a couple times and flinched more times than I can count.

Fast-paced, rampant graphic violence, and human deformities galore.

Note to self: This was my first Keene novel. Even though this one didn't blow me away, I still plan to read The Rising.

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This was a decent read if you are just looking for a kill em all splatterfest of a novel, don't expect any questions to be answers though, except for who will survive and what will be left of them. It was by far the goriest most depraved novel of Brian keene's that I have read and I have read most

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of them. It had some original and grewsum parts in it that made it stand out from similar novels.

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Brian Keene is a sick fuck. And yet, I can't stop reading his books!

Good Book. Don't read if creatures with large mutant diseased phallus are not your thing. If you read Keene at all you already know that he usually has some type of monster lusting after human women and this book is no different, it just part of the fun of reading his books.