06/17/2026 Exploring the Labyrinth by Kit Power: THE RISING: DELIVERANCE, essay 28

Candace Nola
51 minutes ago
11 min read

Exploring The Labyrinth

In this series, I will be reading every Brian Keene fiction book that has been published (and is still available in print) and then producing an essay on it. With the exception of Girl On The Glider, these essays will be based upon a first read of the books concerned. The article will assume you’ve read the book, and you should expect MASSIVE spoilers.

I hope you enjoy my voyage of discovery.

THE RISING: DELIVERANCE

Essay 28

And so we return to the series that started it all; the global apocalypse triggered by a particle accelerator weakening the walls between universes enough to let the Siqquism in (Evil Dead style demons, but millions of them) to start animating corpses with the ultimate aim of destroying all life on earth.

As I mentioned in the last post, in the afterword for this story, Keene speaks with characteristic frankness about his ambivalence towards the book series that made his career (and that, according to this 2010 piece, was still his best-selling work). It’s not quite Arthur Conan Doyle complaining about Holmes (and certainly the quality drop off that afflicted the back end of the Holmes canon has yet to manifest in what I’ve read of The Rising series to date), but there’s definitely a sense of not wanting to be known as ‘the zombie guy’, and a plain admission that the novella was written because it had been requested, and because Keene ‘likes money’, which, in the context of his previous work, The Girl On The Glider, feels like a more than reasonable position to take (quite aside from, I mean, who doesn’t?).

I mention this context because The Rising: Deliverance did a fairly impressive and comprehensive job of wrong-footing me. I went in expecting a novel-length work but found a novella. I also wasn’t looking forward to a Rising story that would take place post City of the Dead; I found the idea of having to get to know a new cast of characters going through this apocalypse pretty unappealing. It felt to me like Jim’s story was intimately bound up in this vision of the end of the world; the idea of either resetting the clock and viewing the whole thing through a different protagonist's eyes (a la Fear The Walking Dead), or picking up with some new people post City of the Dead felt equally unappealing.

Long story short, I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this one. Let alone enjoy the hell out of it.

Because I think The Rising: Deliverance is my favourite book in that series so far.

Part of that comes from the story length, of course; because The Rising: Deliverance is a novella, Keene opts to zoom in on a specific location and a small cast of characters (for most of the running length, there are only three people ‘on screen’); essentially making the tale more like an extended Selected Scenes From The End Of The World story than a sequel or spinoff. It’s a brilliant decision because it allows Keene to tell a very different kind of story from the traditional action-horror fare that The Rising universe normally offers. Instead, we’ve been given an intimate, claustrophobic character study, an exploration of the ultimate survivor's conundrum (shelter in place or make a break for it), and a surprisingly gentle and moving meditation on the nature of faith.

It’s been sufficiently long since I read The Rising that I‘d forgotten that Reverend Thomas Martin intersected with that novel, which I think gave me the ideal perspective to get the most out of this novella; it freed me up to just enjoy the intimacy of the piece, without realising it was destined to link up with the wider narrative.

And it’s kind of a perfect setting: a church building that’s been fortified; the Reverend, plus two members of his parish (Becky, the church organist, and John, the janitor and groundskeeper) hold up inside. They’ve got a good amount of basic supplies, enough to keep them going for at least a few weeks, provided they eat frugally… but outside, the dead are walking around, searching surrounding buildings for survivors, a constant presence and threat.

Rev. Thomas is our third-person close POV character for the story, and he’s just brilliantly realised; a man of deep conviction and faith, trying to navigate a situation that’d test all but the incurably insane. We learn enough about his biography to understand that he’s no stranger to suffering, even before the end of days, and through his meditations on his backstory, Keene allows us to understand how well Thomas was emotionally and psychologically prepared for this moment. There are echoes here of Levi Stoltzfus almost Job-like fatalism, but Thomas doesn’t suffer Levi’s self-pity; instead, he’s this incredible stoic figure, even at the end of the world, still trying to offer comfort and faith to what remains of his congregation… and still fervently praying for a sign, a message.

Still waiting for God to reveal His plan.

Now, I talked at arguably too much length in the last essay about my own Agnosticism, but I do just want to highlight that I think Keene does an exceptional job here portraying a genuine man of faith (as opposed to some kind of charlatan or egotist, who all too often populate the role of priest, both in fiction and in real life). I love how Keene goes all in on the integrity of Thomas' faith, the better to highlight both the good intentions of the man and the extraordinary bleakness of his circumstances. Again, it cuts against the SOP of The Rising series to date, and for this reader, it’s all the stronger as a result; instead of explosions of bloody violence, we’re witness to a slow, merciless unwinding, as first John, and then later Becky abandon the sanctuary of the church, gambling on the uncertain possibility of more survivors, or more supplies… or in Becky’s case, heartbreakingly, just because she feels like she can no longer stay.

One of the things I found quietly astonishing about the way the narrative played out, especially the way the Reverend's two final congregation members part company with the church, is how Keene managed to play both without either bombast or cliché. John is, in his own way, a mirror of Thomas's stubbornness and faith; as quietly insistent as the Reverend is that God’s plan is for them all to remain in the church, John becomes just as quietly adamant that God is telling him something different. It’s brilliant because we’re only privy to Thomas’ perspective, and so we’re never given to definitively know if John is being sincere in his assertions, or if, as Thomas suspects, he’s just reached his limit with confinement and is willing to literally risk it all for a change of scenery. Either way, the way the scene as written is deeply respectful to both characters, making the very mild and polite conflict (albeit with life and death stakes) all the more heartbreaking.

And as if that wasn’t tough enough, we then have to deal with Becky, who has clearly been in love with the widower Rev Thomas for years, and realises that, with John’s departure, the final barrier to being able to consummate her desire has been removed.

Or so she thinks.

What follows is, for my money, one of the most heartbreaking scenes in the Keene canon to date, as Rev Thomas is subject to Becky’s advances, and his physical and emotional desires are put to war with the memory of his dead wife, and an imperative drive to remain faithful to her memory.

It’s excruciating without being cringe; it’s too sincere and sweet and awful for that. Becky’s advance is careful, loving, but also gently insistent, and Thomas is genuinely torn; he even knows that it’s not really about his dead wife’s desires, he sincerely believes that she’d have wanted him to move on. It’s just… he can’t.

Even though he wants to.

It’s emotionally devastating on so many levels; I found myself simultaneously angry with Thomas for turning away from love, from happiness, but also full of sympathy for him and respect for his feelings. And I felt a similar thing with Becky; part of me wishing she’d just stayed resting where she always had, leaving well enough alone, part of me hoping against hope that her advances would be answered; that they’d both find a new peace, accommodation, maybe even love, in the shadow of their sanctuary. The way the scene plays out inside Thomas's head, the matter is in doubt for some time, his resolve hanging by a thread, and I found myself deeply invested in the encounter, desperately hoping that the Reverend would allow himself to submit, to give and receive pleasure… and when he does finally assert his refusal, it was an emotionally shattering moment, the crashing sound of the door to a possible future being irrevocably closed.

That Becky was gone the next morning, I found as upsetting as it was inevitable, and the way Thomas's sorrow echoed my own was a really impressive piece of writing. It also seemed to me to be setting up an incredibly bleak final act, and I was curious as to how Keene was planning on handling the inevitability of what was to come; would the Reverand eventually be found by the living dead, and be murdered in his church? Or would he survive in there until the final stage of the apocalypse, being consumed in the end by fire? Either ending felt plausible, given Keene’s relentless commitment to Going There, and I’ll admit to feeling more than a little trepidation about how dark this was going to get.

And then, of course, Jim turns up.

It was that moment that I realised this was, effectively, a prequel to The Rising, and the relief I felt was palpable. Which is odd, because on one level, Thomas's ultimate fate isn’t changed by this knowledge; everything that happens in The Rising and The City of the Dead will still happen, and as I discussed back in those essays, it does not end well for, well, anyone.

Still, I felt lifted. Because after seeing the Reverend's personal emotional apocalypse slowly unwind over the course of the novella, it felt good to realise that he had, at the end, been sent his sign from God, and that (in his mind) his faith, and his suffering, had been for a purpose.

Which is one hell of a trick to pull off in a story set in The Rising universe.

Bravo, Mr Keene.

The novella contains two backup short stories; both also set in the Rising mythos.

The first was a startling effort for me. The Resurrection and the Life take what should be the cartoonishly blasphemous idea of putting Ob and The Siqquism into, well, The Bible. Specifically, into the story of Lazarus, who in this version of events is brought back to life not by a miracle, but by the intervention of a significantly more cosmically evil entity.

And I’ve got to be honest, when I realised what was going on, quite early on page one, I was far from convinced.

It seemed like a bad idea. I don’t mean in storytelling terms, to be clear; rather it seemed to me that it was potentially both dangerous and unwise to mess with what its many adherents insist is The Greatest Story Ever Told, by saying ‘okay, but what if it’s a Splatterpunk story? It just seemed to me to be an almost untraversable minefield, tonally; the odds of ending up in Life of Brian or MediEvil Dead territory felt fairly high, and if that was somehow avoided, it still felt incongruous to be inserting splatterpunk villains into a story many consider to be history rather than mythology (and, given the lack of sense of humour displayed by some of the more enthusiastic adherents, potentially even real-world dangerous, to boot).

But really, I should have had more faith, especially considering the care and respect Keene took with the character of Reverend Thomas in the previous story.

The voice change is stark; while it’s not quite King James Bible prose, Keene clearly takes care to capture the tone and feel of biblical verse as the story plays out. It’s a smart choice because it removes from his writer's toolbox a lot of the more smart-arsed tools that could have derailed the narrative, as well as showing a respect for the source material.

More importantly, though, he uses what should still be a preposterous conceit to produce a genuinely brilliant meditation on the divinity and humanity of Christ.

According to most of Christianity's mainstream traditions, one of the central mysteries of the figure of Jesus - and one of the key faith claims - is that he was both fully human and fully divine. It’s not quite paradoxical (unlike the claims that God is both ‘omniscient and omnipotent’, which does seem to be contradictory - if everything is knowable, including the passage of history, then it’s not possible to change anything, so surely it’s one or the other), but it is something that theologians marvel over and debate to this day, trying to tease out the implications of the statement, and how those implications impact on the interpretation of the text of what Jesus (according to The Bible) said.

So, in The Resurrection and the Life, we see an exploration of exactly that theme; when Christ hears of Lazarus' sickness, he hesitates before going to visit his old friend. He does this because his fully divine nature means he knows that by completing that miracle, it’ll be the beginning of the end, and his fully human nature, fearful of the suffering to come, finds excuses to delay with devastating consequences.

It’s clever on a few levels, I think. For starters, what happens is broadly compatible with the existing bible story, so it could be read as an alternative text (as with many of the ‘heretical’ Gnostic texts, some of which were written at a similar time to the works that were eventually assembled into what became The New Testament). The voice Keene uses really helps with this; it’s a simple, declarative style, almost third-person objective, so unlike his usual third-person close or first-person comfort zone, and it provides the text with a needed gravitas. It is also compatible with Keene’s overall mythos and discusses the power relationship between The Thirteen and the Christian God that’s been mentioned before but in an incredibly direct way. It’s a gutsy move, but I think he pulls it off.

But mainly, I come back to that exploration of human frailty married to divine power and understanding, and how Keene finds a way to throw the two facets of Christ into sharp relief, via the medium of a pulp horror villain.

Again, I say, Bravo.

The final story in the collection, The Siqquism Who Stole Christmas, reverts pleasingly to type; it’s a rip-roaring short story where Santa (who, like Jesus, is, in this version of reality, real) has died while heading out on his annual present delivery route, and is replaced by Ob. It’s exactly as bonkers and entertaining as you’d expect for the premise, and I had a great time with it, not to mention a welcome sense of relief, given the two very different wringers the first two stories had put me through.

I’m again baffled and a little alarmed at the consistency of quality during this period of Keene’s work, given the volume of his output. We know from the afterword of The Girl On The Glider of the personal toll the workload was exacting on his life, and it’s interesting how some of that tone carries over to the afterword for Deliverance. And, knowing what we do about Keene’s biography, I think it’s very interesting that this tome contains two stories that, in very different ways, are fundamentally explorations of matters relating to faith and destiny, and the inherent unknowability of both.

Next up: Entombed.

21/6/5

ORDER VOLUME 1 OF EXPLORING THE LABYRINTH NOW!

Exploring The Labyrinth Volume One collects the first 30 essays in this series, and features an introduction by Eric LaRocca, and an intimate, exclusive, career spanning interview with Brian Keene.

Order now to get your copy on October 13th: http://mybook.to/KPETL

LINKS TO WORKS BY BRIAN KEENE:

Order Brian Keene books and many other indie horror titles direct from Vortex Books:

https://vortexbooksandcomicsonline.bigcartel.com/products

Missing a Keene title and can't find it on Vortex, check out his Amazon page:

https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B001IQW9KY/

BIO FOR KIT POWER:

Kit Power is an author of horror and dark crime fiction novels, novellas, and short stories, also a reviewer, essayist, and podcaster. The Finite, A Song For The End (BFA finalist, 2021), and Millionaire’s Day (BFA finalist, 2025) are his most recent fiction works; three novellas with interconnected elements that bring the apocalypse to his hometown of Milton Keynes in three very different ways. He encourages you not to read too much into that.

When he’s not gleefully visiting destruction on his hometown (fictionally), Kit writes non-fiction (much of which is collected in the two-volume My Life In Horror tomes, available wherever books are sold), reviews, blogs, and podcasts on subjects as diverse as Sherlock Holmes, Bruce Springsteen, and short horror fiction.

And if you enjoyed what you just read, please back his Patreon and buy his damn books, because the man needs to eat. Thanks.