Author: Jonathan Maberry
Genres: Horror, Young Adult
Format: Paperback
Pages: 458
Publication Date: 5/3/2011
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
★★★★☆
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.
Well this one was definitely not what I was expecting. I don't read reviews prior to reading a book due to concerns that I'll spoil the book for myself, and the synopses of this book didn't begin to do it justice.
I'm tempted to type up the text on the back cover for you, but that seems somehow silly.
So let me emphasize: This book was not what I expected it to be.
I've discovered recently that I love zombie fiction. What's wonderful about it, for me, is that every zombie book (or series) that I've read has been different than the books that I read before it.
Everybody has a different take on zombies, and that's pretty cool, if you ask me. Sorry, I shouldn't use that word. Benny Imura would cringe. How about I say it's pretty fascinating?
Jonathan Maberry's take on zombies is that they were people once, too. Or at least that's Tom Imura's take on zombies. For me, this perspective was life-changing and not at all in the least bit what I expected to get from this book.
Okay, maybe life changing is strong wording for how this book affected me. The point is that it did affect me.
When we think of zombies, and in terms of the majority of zombie fiction that I've read, we see the monsters, and not the people who they used to be. Most zombie fiction features these monsters as the centerpiece of an unspeakable horror.
Most zombie fiction doesn't humanize the monsters. And those books that do put into perspective that these monsters were once living human beings maintain the focus on the zombie as the monster.
Not Rot & Ruin. This book is different because the monsters in this book are the humans themselves.
In a post-apocalyptic world, wouldn't they be?
Now bear in mind that as much as I love reading zombie novels, for some reason I'm not much for them on the screen. I'm one of those blasphemers who doesn't watch The Walking Dead (though I think that I'd like to at some point) and has never watched World War Z (but I'd like to read the book).
If this theme touches in those stories, I've not seen it because I haven't watched them with any consistency.
For me, it's what made this story stand out, and it's what's driven me to make sure that the other three books in the series (plus the anthology of short stories) is on my "to be read" list (and on my "to purchase" list).
I liked a lot of things about this book, but I want to take time out to mention the pacing.
Firstly, it's important to me to point out that this book progressed pretty slowly in the beginning. Maberry introduces the main character (Benny Imura) slowly and painstakingly and I believe that this could have been sped up considerably.
However, beyond that point the story moved with some of the most amazing pacing that I've read in a long time. Major events were balanced well with historical storytelling and world building, which were balanced with development of the relationships in the story.
Pacing is important to me, and this book is paced darn-near perfectly.
The chapters are relatively short. Some are longer than others, with the shortest chapters being two pages long, but I like short, digestible chapters that allow me to finish a chapter or two up in a pre-determined span of time. That's another thing that I liked.
Short chapters also contributed to the excellent pacing in this novel.
If you've been following me, you might already be asking "what about the love triangle?"
Well. There is no love triangle in this book. Or... not really. The story brushes up against it but then abandons it entirely, and there is very little romance in this book. What romance there is in this story only enhances it and presumably gives the author somewhere to go from this book into the next.
This book surprised me by coming close to a five-star rating for me. Those five-star ratings ought to be rare. I think I'm just choosing books well these days.
At the end of the day, the drawbacks were the slow start to this book and its predictability toward the end. I found that I anticipated a particular outcome long before it happened, along with the reasons that it happened. That's always a smidge disappointing.
This is definitely a book that I'm already recommending to my friends!
I'm tempted to type up the text on the back cover for you, but that seems somehow silly.
So let me emphasize: This book was not what I expected it to be.
I've discovered recently that I love zombie fiction. What's wonderful about it, for me, is that every zombie book (or series) that I've read has been different than the books that I read before it.
Everybody has a different take on zombies, and that's pretty cool, if you ask me. Sorry, I shouldn't use that word. Benny Imura would cringe. How about I say it's pretty fascinating?
Jonathan Maberry's take on zombies is that they were people once, too. Or at least that's Tom Imura's take on zombies. For me, this perspective was life-changing and not at all in the least bit what I expected to get from this book.
Okay, maybe life changing is strong wording for how this book affected me. The point is that it did affect me.
When we think of zombies, and in terms of the majority of zombie fiction that I've read, we see the monsters, and not the people who they used to be. Most zombie fiction features these monsters as the centerpiece of an unspeakable horror.
Most zombie fiction doesn't humanize the monsters. And those books that do put into perspective that these monsters were once living human beings maintain the focus on the zombie as the monster.
Not Rot & Ruin. This book is different because the monsters in this book are the humans themselves.
In a post-apocalyptic world, wouldn't they be?
Now bear in mind that as much as I love reading zombie novels, for some reason I'm not much for them on the screen. I'm one of those blasphemers who doesn't watch The Walking Dead (though I think that I'd like to at some point) and has never watched World War Z (but I'd like to read the book).
If this theme touches in those stories, I've not seen it because I haven't watched them with any consistency.
For me, it's what made this story stand out, and it's what's driven me to make sure that the other three books in the series (plus the anthology of short stories) is on my "to be read" list (and on my "to purchase" list).
I liked a lot of things about this book, but I want to take time out to mention the pacing.
Firstly, it's important to me to point out that this book progressed pretty slowly in the beginning. Maberry introduces the main character (Benny Imura) slowly and painstakingly and I believe that this could have been sped up considerably.
However, beyond that point the story moved with some of the most amazing pacing that I've read in a long time. Major events were balanced well with historical storytelling and world building, which were balanced with development of the relationships in the story.
Pacing is important to me, and this book is paced darn-near perfectly.
The chapters are relatively short. Some are longer than others, with the shortest chapters being two pages long, but I like short, digestible chapters that allow me to finish a chapter or two up in a pre-determined span of time. That's another thing that I liked.
Short chapters also contributed to the excellent pacing in this novel.
If you've been following me, you might already be asking "what about the love triangle?"
Well. There is no love triangle in this book. Or... not really. The story brushes up against it but then abandons it entirely, and there is very little romance in this book. What romance there is in this story only enhances it and presumably gives the author somewhere to go from this book into the next.
This book surprised me by coming close to a five-star rating for me. Those five-star ratings ought to be rare. I think I'm just choosing books well these days.
At the end of the day, the drawbacks were the slow start to this book and its predictability toward the end. I found that I anticipated a particular outcome long before it happened, along with the reasons that it happened. That's always a smidge disappointing.
This is definitely a book that I'm already recommending to my friends!
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