I have a fucking love/hate relationship with Brian Keene's books..."The Rising" and "City of the Dead" were the two greatest things ever in the history of zombies. And I'm talking everything dealing with zombies: books, movies, death metal album covers, everything! But then you get to "Ghoul" and it was like a boring 30th rate ripoff of Stephen King and "Terminal" was one of the worst things I've ever read in my life! Imagine if K-Fed was the main character in a novel and you'll understand how deep that book hurt my brain. Firmly in the middle of this love/hate tug of war is "The Conqueror Worms" which starts out kicking balls and taking names then about halfway through it starts dying a slow death.One day it starts the rain...everywhere on fucking Earth at once!!! That's a great idea for a book and I especially liked that instead of wasting time with a slow build up, Keene starts the story on Day 41 where an old man by the name of Teddy is writing a diary of the events in a notebook (kinda like the dude in SK's superior "The Mist", the short story not the shitty movie!). Teddy is old as fuck and he lives alone way up on a mountain in West Virginia. For the first few weeks things were just wet, but then as the rain continued Teddy started noticing things that just weren't right, even more not right than the nonstop, worldwide rain. This first part of the novel was a lot of fun and I was getting a little creeped out, then at the end of the first act Teddy gets some visitors and, for me, it ruined all of the solitary creepiness and dread that Keene had been building up to this point so skillfully. Even worse is the entire second act is told from one of the visitor's point of view and I found it kinda boring. It shouldn't have been since the stuff that was happening was exciting, but I really hated all of the new characters. And the change of gears felt weird, imagine if a third of the way through "The Shining" Godzilla attacks the hotel.
So the second part tells of these survivors living in the top of a skyscraper (cause the water is so high) and fighting different creatures including a siren and a giant fucking Lovecraft creature! WTF! Now this shit is just getting out of hand. Fast-forward to the final section and Teddy's house is attacked by a bunch of gigantic worms the size of fucking buses and even bigger! It's crazy as fuck and action packed, but yet somehow I just didn't care any longer what happened. The intimate relationship I had with Teddy at the beginning is long gone and now he's running around all over the place like a geriatric Indiana Jones.
My advise: if you haven't read Keene's zombie books then do so immediately. They're exciting as fuck and more violent than every zombie movie ever made combined! There's zombie-fucking-squirrels for Satan's sake!!! And even zombies with rocket launchers!!!!! And let's not forget the zombie rapist, as in this guy is raping zombies! But if you're just really in the mood for some worm horror then read Edward Lee's "Slither" instead. That book is fucking nuts! Let me give you a small example: there's a part where a guy is literally pissing worms and as soon as they hit the ground they're turning around and attacking him!!! And of course there's the always standard Edward Lee mutant rapes. That dude's a weird motherfucker. =P
If you have the spare time and the curiosity then give "The Conqueror Worms" a shot. It's nothing groundbreaking, but it is a fun time waster. I do think that with the proper script it would be a fucking badass movie! The visual of the worm and the bird haunted me for days.
