4 Stars!

Tim Waggoner has been scaring me for a long time. He is an oft-overlooked master of dark fiction that never disappoints. His books have a hard edge that may not appeal to all readers but I have always been entertained by his work. When I got a copy of We Will Rise from Flame Tree Press, I knew it was a book for me and wasted little time starting the novel for another scare from Waggoner.



The dead have begun to reappear in the world and everything has gone crazy. These are not just ghostly apparitions or zombies. The dead come in all shapes and sizes from humanoid to the most bizarre creatures imaginable to just malignant thought. One thing is for sure: the dead are not happy and have not come in peace. They have come to start a war in which they torment and kill the living to add more souls to the afterlife. No one knows why this is happening. Or, really, what is happening. All that is known is the world will never be the same and no place is safe. Not even the small town of Echo Hill, Ohio. This sleepy town has become the epicenter of the dead’s invasion and no one may survive.



Echo Hill is the epicenter of Homecoming Day: the day in which the dead return to take as many of the living back with them. Every person has their own unique experience based upon those they have lost. The ghosts use their many forms to work their way back into the lives of the living and create their own personal hell. Whether though revenge or feeding upon the psychotic dreams of the living, the dead have nothing more in mind than to create as much havoc and destruction as possible. With the dead everywhere, there is nowhere for the living to hide. The bigger question is whether this event is truly just for one day or if it is the beginning of Hell on Earth from which no one will ever escape.



Tim Waggoner has been writing horror with an edge for a long time and We Will Rise is no exception. There is a lot of violence in this novel and many of the scenes push the limits of horror to the edge of extreme and maybe a little over. The action starts in the novel from the beginning and never slows down. There is plenty of time given for character development since the ghosts take on the form that will cause the most misery to each of the characters and the reader gets a sense of who they are. Whether they are ruled by their insecurities or reveling in the chaos that is being unleashed on the world, Waggoner exposes the motives for all the characters and makes this an integral part of the story. The characters feel real, and the reader can relate to them, for better or worse, as the story progresses. It is the human touch of the characters that makes the story work, and it is a little surprising that Waggoner can pull this off with so many different characters in the story that causes a constant switching of perspectives as the novel progresses. It can be a bit confusing at times as the perspective of the story is constantly changing, but it ultimately works in the end with only a little work needed from the reader to keep things straight.



It is the everchanging perspective of the story, however, that keeps it from reaching its full potential. We Will Rise often reads as an interweaving set of short stories rather than a novel and I kept waiting for it to all pull together. There is an explanation, a kind of hive mind of the dead that is looking to increase its population so that it can become a sentient entity of its own, but it seems to fall a little flat. Since it seems malignant, it left me wondering what happens to the good people after death as well as why the murder and mayhem is necessary instead of just ending the lives of as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. The explanation may work for some readers, but it left me feeling a little lost and wondering what the meaning of the novel was in the end. There is a lot to like in We Will Rise and the novel gets five stars in originality and action/horror, but it ultimately felt a little unsatisfying in its explanation and that keeps it from getting an overall five-star rating. I would recommend the book for horror fans in general, and Waggoner fans in particular, although I do not feel as if this is one of his best novels.



I would like to thank Flame Tree Press and NetGalley for this review copy. We Will Rise is available now.

I’m reading more horror at the moment and am trying to lose myself in it. This can be difficult when the logical part of me doesn’t want to shut up and keeps questioning the possibility of things actually happening.

There are a lot of things that happen in We Will Rise that most certainly would not happen in real life. Thankfully, I was able to let go and enjoy this book. Part of that was due to The Walking Dead and It vibes it gave, two horror stories which I very much enjoyed. This book is both gory and creepy, two things that don’t often come together in horror. How some of the ghosts appeared really sent chills down my spine.

I also liked the variety of characters We Will Rise had, both dead and alive. The thing is, it gives you a lot to keep up with and, for the first quarter of the book, the differing stories are very much separated. I can’t quite put my finger on why I didn’t like this but it did result in me loosing excitement much too early on. Saying that, eventually I did feel more connected to the characters and ended up liking the book overall in the end.

Echo Springs and for that matter, the entire world is having a very difficult day; people are coming back from the dead and they are not quite how you remember them. This was a hilarious, fun romp that brings back fond memories of the Saturday Matinee creature double feature. Good pick-up for a beach or airplane read.

This book is creepy and gory and most definitely not for the faint hearted.

There was so much going on and it had me hooked right from the start. We are introduced to lots of different characters at the beginning as so many different scenarios are occurring.

I was rooting for most of the characters hoping they would manage to escape ‘The Homecoming’ but there were a few I disliked and hoped they would meet a nasty end 🤣🤣

If are a horror fan and not squeamish definitely give this a read.

Thank you to Random Things Tours and Flame Tree Press for having me on the tour and for my gifted ebook.

Let me start by saying that I loved this book! Ghost stories are one of my favorite reads. When the ghosts become violent, what a fun read! On the day of the Homecoming, ghosts of friends of relatives return. Only these ghosts aren't here to visit their loved ones, they are here to cause pain. This really is a great read! I recommend this book to anyone who loves a story that they can get lost in. Don't expect happy endings but all is not always as horrible as it seems!

A horror according to my heart: lovely place that becomes a nightmare populated by evil ghosts, action, gore, and a fast placed plot.
Highly entertaining, it kept me on the edge.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

WE WILL RISE is the latest horror novel from Tim Waggoner. In Echo Springs, Ohio, the dead are coming back--not as your quiet, run-of-the-mill ghosts, but as vengeful, violent entities that are capable of physical harm.

To begin with, this book is non-stop action--it goes from one person's personal situation, to another. The action scenes are almost too much, at times, as I honestly was exhausted reading at one point. The idea is unique and quite captivating, the characters have some great representation all around--which I found made the story more compelling. The first half, we get to know more about the characters, while still maintaining the action sequences and some great, bloody scenes.

Towards the end of the book, I felt that the action took over completely--without much adding to our original characters, other than wondering WHY things were happening. While there is more that is addressed at the end, I just didn't feel that it made as much sense (even in the context of suspended belief), and would have liked additional information regarding the plot than just the brutality. It brought a lot of questions to my mind, which remained unresolved.

Overall, some great inclusive characters, creative action scenes, and a unique approach to the undead. I only wish the core plot idea had been a little stronger/more detailed than what we had. Still, a fantastic read for the horror lovers who are mainly looking for carnage.

So gory, so good! So Implacable! You want a story that will give you endless nights of raving inescapable nightmares, right here it is.


A quiet unassuming Ohio town. A routine day, like any other. NOT! This is The Homecoming, the day all the dearly departed return, only they're no longer dear and they're not here for hugs and sympathy.


The Dead have an Agenda; and across the globe, no one can survive The Homecoming.

Tim Waggoner is an ever-present source of delight. As a writer, Waggoner understands horror on a technical level. He knows the building blocks of the genre, how to construct a scene to hit all the proper beats for terror. He understands exactly how to craft his books from beginning, middle, and end while providing unique and innovative stories. We Will Rise is no different.

The novel combines cosmic horror, traditional ghost stories, apocalyptic horror and introduces a diverse cast of characters in Echo Hill, Ohio. The dead are rising and attacking the living, claiming their souls to add to the ranks of the ghosts. And they’re doing it en masse. The world is changing and ending as vast swaths are consumed by the ghosts.

Enter the survivors. From Oliver, a transgender young man living in the worst of the bible belt, to business major Faizan and EMT Julie, they are caught up in the disaster and forced to band together to survive. Not every survivor is benevolent; librarian Jerome hides a fiendish dark side and seemingly sweet cafe owner Karen is a twisted sadist out to torment her sister and everyone close to her. Some find themselves bonding with the more sadistic ghosts, out to destroy as much as they can and slaughter the living. Karen has a scene at her sister’s school that is intense, harrowing and the most horrifying in the novel.

Notably, Waggoner’s diverse cast shines. He has always effectively balanced ensemble casts and here is no different. Waggoner has genuine compassion for his characters, with Oliver’s plight as a transgender man in a hyper-religious environment portrayed sympathetically. His girlfriend is killed by her intensely transphobic father, prompting her ghost to return to haunt Oliver in hopes he will be with her again.

The reveal of the source of the ghosts makes this a cosmic horror story; hope is not in the offering for the long term, but small victories can mean everything. The survivors are forced to stay ahead of the ghosts and the worst of humanity, but defiance is achieved in living just that much longer. We Will Rise a tense, emotional, scary ride and one of Waggoner’s best.

It’s the end of the world as we know it. . . and some people shockingly feel just fine. Ghosts of the dead begin appearing all over the world. It’s Homecoming Day and time for the dead to come home to have the living join them in the afterlife. For most people, this is horrifying. There are some truly gruesome death scenes in here. The most frightening part of this book was that some people were very happy with this because it gave them the opportunity to witness, and in some cases participate, in the undoing of the world. This book was full of action from page one. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys supernatural, ghost, serial killer, and apocalyptic horror.

A non-stop riot of blood, violence and ghosts, but not the usual sort of ghosts. These manifest in some very unexpected ways, and they're not happy. If you want subtle horror, this isn't it. This goes full throttle with the weirdness and the unapologetic horror. Nightmare fuel not suitable for under 18s.

Thank you #NetGalley, #FlamTreePress for letting me review #WeWillRise by #TimWaggoner.

This is a book that will stay with me for a long time. It is so well written and kept my attention the entire time. I wish it had not ended, I wanted to keep reading more.

At first, it is hard to keep up with all the characters. But as the story moves along, it gets easier. The world building, the Monad, and the evil people were so well described I got lost in the emotions and events happening.

This is a story about fear, hatred, and revenge with a lot of hope, happiness and the will to survive.

I hope to read many more books like this from Tim Waggoner. He is definitely an author to look out for.

What would you do if every loved one you've ever had that has passed away came back to enact a vengeance you knew nothing about? We Will Rise - and the ghosts of the world rose up in Tim Waggoner's newest horror novel.

This book blew me away! The gore, the horror, the creativity of each death. All of these details came together to tell not only a few and new story, but one that was genuinely terrifying. I had some idea of what to expect when I started reading this, but the change in perspectives ensured that the story was fast-paced and interesting until it's riveting conclusion.

You do not want to miss out on this story and I for one will not be sleeping for several days because of it!!

It's a Ghost Apocalypse in Echo Hill, Ohio as the undead return to torment and kill the living in Tim Waggoner's latest, We Will Rise.

Although the idea is pretty nifty and an interesting - and much weirder - spin on the traditional zombie apocalypse trope, the plot never really delves much deeper than that. Mostly, We Will Rise feels like an exercise in sustaining one long (and prolonged) action scene, albeit one divvied up amongst a handful of characters. Waggoner hits the ground running, beginning with a ghostly murder in the shower, and then, in chapter two, introduces us a woman haunted by her miscarried baby. You know you're in for a wild ride when a dead infant begins attacking its mother, trying to forcibly reenter the womb through her mouth and demanding to be let back in! Of course, since this is a Tim Waggoner book, things just get stranger from there.

Waggoner is undeniably creative, merging disparate ideas and tropes to give readers something fresh and unusual, but it does require a higher than usual level of suspended disbelief and a strong tolerance for the weird and fantastical. I generally like the man's work, but I have to admit that he can get a bit too weird for my tastes at times. While We Will Rise is hardly the weirdest Waggoner title out there, his material is a bit of an acquired taste and it's one that I'm not quite readily able to swallow so much of anymore. Here, we get a lot of physics-defying spectral anomalies and reality shifting, on top of strange, inhuman concoctions created by the ghosts (one spirit assumes the form of a monster made out of teeth a la Channel Zero, but whose own mouth teeth are the humans it has captured and implanted in its gums, while another appears human but is able to shoot bee stingers from its arms). Unbound by any sort of reality, and with seemingly nigh unstoppable power sets, Waggoner certainly brings a different paradigm to your typical ghostly hauntings.

But it's also exceedingly exhausting. If We Will Rise is an exercise in sustained action and nihilism, then it's also a rigorous endurance test for readers. By the halfway mark, I was tired, and by about 80%, I was both exhausted and, frustratingly, still oblivious as to why any of these events were happening. It's not easy to sustain this level of action for such a prolonged period, but it's even harder to keep one invested without any sort of explanation for why it's all happening to begin with. Like the characters, readers will spend the vast majority of the book completely in the dark to the cause, purpose, or motivations of these increasingly outlandish spectral attacks. When we finally do get some answers in the closing chapters, the rationale behind it all feels awfully flimsy and disproportionate to the events surrounding it.

To its credit, though, We Will Rise does feature a nicely diverse cast, including a trans boy, Oliver, whose perspective was much appreciated and, I thought, pretty well handled. Waggoner always does a good job of giving us multiple viewpoints that are representative of the real world, in terms of race, ethnicity, and gender. Of course, this also means there's some wholly undesirable perspectives, too, like the appropriately named Karen - a sentient, racist-to-the-max trashbag of a human being who lives solely to make others miserable. All that's missing from her is the MAGA hat! She's irredeemable and utterly unsympathetic garbage, the kind of character you want to see killed off immediately and who, naturally, sticks around until damn near the bitter end.

While the relentless action is good for keeping the pages turning, at least for a time, Waggoner's latest feels a bit too thin in terms of plot and themes, which mostly boil down to a simplistic "some people are good, but a lot are bad, too." We Will Rise is a lot of sound and fury, but one that ultimately signifies nothing.

Look, I'm all for having a diverse range of characters in a story but if you're going to have a trans character then you better not constantly dead name that character.
The author clearly didn't include a trans character for trans-representation and did it only to tick off some diversity box because if they had been genuine with their inclusion then they would know how harmful and painful it would be for a trans-reader to constantly have to read about characters dead-naming and misgendering the trans character.

I really enjoyed Waggoner's novelistations of several movies so I was really excited to read this. And to be fair, I actually really enjoyed it for the most part, but as someone who has friends that are trans, who are also fans of horror, I couldn't help but think about the unnecessary pain this book could cause them.

Flame Tree and/or Waggoner: PLEASE edit it so that once Oliver's character is established as being a trans-man all future references to them are by their name - OLIVER - or by their correct pronouns - HE/HIM.

Edit: Having had a discussion with the author, I feel confident that no harm was intended and I appreciate their commitment to doing better going forwards.

Such a fun, horrifying rollercoaster of a book! Once I started, I couldn’t put it down. Excellent for fans of “The Taking” by Dean Koontz, and “The Haunted Forest Tour” by James A. Moore & Jeff Strand.
I could read a whole book of nothing but everyone’s personal nightmare encounters with the evil deceased/ Monad.
Thank you to Tim Waggoner, NetGalley, and Flame Tree Press for a copy!

It’s a chilly February day and Echo Springs is about to be painted red. The dead have returned and they’ve got something special planned for the people they knew when they had heartbeats.

“Evidently, people are starting to see ghosts.”

Those whose pasts are about to collide with their present include substitute elementary school teacher Mari, business major Faizan, homeschooled son of religious parents Oliver, café owner Karen, librarian Jerome and EMT Julie.

There’s nowhere to run because what’s happening in Echo Springs isn’t an isolated event; the entire planet is experiencing a reddening.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had this much fun watching peoples’ insides become their outsides. The death scenes are gory and imaginative. Some are even worthy of a chuckle. On second thought, maybe they’re not supposed to be funny and my inner Karen is showing…

The blood flows freely, the organs are on show and the body count is ginormous. I had planned on tallying up all of the deaths but am pleased to report that I became overwhelmed by the task and gave up. I’m having trouble choosing a favourite death scene but the atrocities I witnessed at Smiles, Inc. are probably going to stay with me the longest.

This would have been a much quicker read if I hadn’t been compelled to stop every time I got to a particularly graphic description so I could read it to the person beside me, interrupting their current read. I definitely need to see this book made into a movie.

Had I visited Echo Springs before the dead decided to add to their ranks, I would have visited the library (obviously) and Icing on the Cake.

The fact that my Kindle looked like it was haunted every time I opened it while reading was just perfect.

My only niggle was that, of all of the people I met in Echo Springs, it was Oliver who was destined to spend most of the book either entirely or very nearly naked. I wish someone had found some pants for him at some point during the carnage.

Content warnings include mention of death by suicide, emotional abuse, gun violence, homophobia, miscarriage, physical abuse, racial and religious slurs, racism, sexual assault, suicidal ideation and transphobia. If you’re squeamish or have emetophobia, this may not be the read for you.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Flame Tree Press for the opportunity to read this book.

We Will Rise by Tim Waggoner is a blood-soaked wild adventure set in Echo Hill, Ohio filled with ghosts, diverse characters and soooo much gore.

From the first page on Waggoner had me hooked. His imagination is truly off the charts, and never could I have predicted what would happen next. There was so much weird stuff going on at all times that even the main characters had no clue what was happening to them. The different types of ghosts and scenarios that unfolded brought something truly fresh to the ghost trope, and I loved every minute of it.

This isn't just another "the dead walk the earth" sort of story. No, this is a brutal gore fest that will make you not only uncomfortable, but sometimes even sad. If you're squeamish, I would say you better be prepared!

The dead are returning, coming back to destroy those who they felt did them wrong. Nobody in Echo Hill is safe. A group of survivors that have seen their loved ones taken in the most devastating of way band together to try and survive what is happening. They're all running from demons - literally.

This was absolutely fantastic! How on earth could this book be anything other than 5 stars!!

The book is CREEPY. It's devastating and brutal, with parts not for the faint hearted. It's definitely a horror, and one of my new favourite horrors that's for sure!

Fans of the supernatural / walking dead / brutal gory horror - you will LOVE this.

What a gory blood filled adventure. Tim Waggoner delivers on old school creepy blood and guts horror. We Will Rise is no exception. A fast, fun and terrifying tale of the undead and those living loved ones quest to get away alive. Super creepy.

Thank you NetGalley for this arc