"In the zombie-infested, post-apocalyptic America where Benny Imura lives, every teenager must find a job by the time they turn fifteen or get their rations cut in half. Benny doesn't want to apprentice as a zombie hunter with his boring older brother Tom, but he has no choice. He expects a tedious job whacking zoms for cash, but what he gets is a vocation that will teach him what it means to be human."
Awards & Nominations:
- Bram Stoker Award Nominee for Best Novel (2010)
- CYBILS Award for Young Adult Fantasy & Science Fiction (2010)
- Missouri Gateway Readers Award (2013)
- Lincoln Award Nominee (2016)
We are just weeks after an election and things are still in constant turmoil. While the election was going on a coworker and I joked that this would end in either a civil war, the purge, or maybe the rapture would happen. With everything going on I felt like it was a good time to read a good old fashioned zombie book. Who knows, we may be in a similar situation of life and death before too long.
Rot & Ruin is the story of Benny and his older brother Tom who is a zombie bounty hunter. Benny is 15 which means he must find a job or his rations will be cut in half. After many failed job interviews and first days, Benny decides to take his brother Tom up on the offer to go into the family business - zombie hunter. Benny soon learns that Tom isn't a coward that ran during First Night instead of helping their parents. Tom and Benny end up in a bit of trouble as they must set out into the rot and ruin to find Benny's friend Nix and a mysterious and elusive girl known as "The Lost Girl".
I'm was not looking forward to this book and it has sat on my shelf for over a year. I'm not big in the zombies and brains genre, but knew that I had to eventually read this book since it is on the Missouri Gateway award list I'm reading. Interestingly, this book lacked in the gore and brains and zombies aspect. There was a larger focus on the relationship between Benny and Tom, and the relationship between Benny and Nix. The author really spent this entire first book just laying the groundwork for the coming books and building fairly elaborate character profiles. I think the relationship that unfolded between Benny and Nix was a long time coming but was really predictable. The moment that it was mentioned that Benny's friend Morgie liked Nix I knew exactly how it would play out. Benny had a fairly big character arc in this book as he grew up and changed due to all that he had seen and had to deal with. I do however think it was a really BIG change in a very SMALL amount of time. It was a little extreme in my opinion for Benny to be going day to day just enjoying hanging out with his friends to focusing on saving others and slaying the twisted humans and the walking zombies. I've never seen a character make that kind of transition in such a short period of time.
This book dragged on in the same slow manner that a zombie moves. There were chapters that I was begging for something exciting to happen. I think that Maberry focused too much on the characters, their stories, their relationships, and ultimately their character arc that he forgot to focus on telling the story. Half of what was in this book focused on building a character profile. I felt like I was given too much information about some of the characters that I honestly don't want to read the rest of the series because I can already predict how it is going to play out. I expected way more brains and zombie scare scenes.
As I said before, this isn't a book I would normally read. It reminded me of a lot of the book Scythe. I do not plan on reading the rest of the series. This book dragged on and left me hoping it would end quickly so I could move on to something else. Overall I have to give it 2 stars. I think this would be a popular book for teen boys, especially those who are wanting a zombie-filled story.
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