Jonathan Maberry’s Rot & Ruin is the first book in the Rot & Ruin series. Everything changed the night the dead came to life. On that First Night, the dead attacked the living, killing millions and adding to their numbers. This horror and violence continued for years until groups of survivors banded together and hid behind the walls of small isolated towns. Within these towns, people try as best they can, to recreate some semblance of a normal life, a simple society with simple rules. In one town in particular, one home to the protagonist Benny Imura, all fifteen-year-olds must find work or lose their food rations. Despite his best efforts, he reluctantly agrees to train under his older brother Tom and become a zombie hunter.
In the post-apocalyptic wasteland the United States has become, almost everyone has some memory of the First Night. Benny’s memory is of his older brother Tom picking him up and running as his mother and father turn into zombies before his eyes. Since then, he has loathed the zombies for taking his parents and his older brother for leaving their mother to die instead of staying and fighting. As he grew up in the town, the hate only festered, creating an angsty, annoying teenage boy blinded by his own hate-filled worldview. At the same time, Tom took a job as a zombie hunter and quietly gained notoriety while providing for Benny. Benny always hated his brother, secretly calling him a coward, but when Benny starts working with Tom, he is forced to question his worldview. Outside of the town, in the vast world of the Rot & Ruin, nothing is as simple as it first appears and Benny is faced with difficult questions that don’t have easy answers, but, through it all, Benny emerges a stronger, more mature person. Rot & Ruin is a surprisingly well-written book. I went into this book with low expectations, expecting a shallow book with mindless violence and gore. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the book is more than nonsensical violence.
The book has a slow start, gently introducing us to the post-apocalyptic wasteland that the earth has become. The heavy world building is seamlessly woven into the story, keeping the early plot from dragging too much. However, the pacing soon picks up and the conflict growing more and more tense with each and every realization Benny makes until it is racing to a powerful, action filled climax.
While the action and pacing are well done, the most meaningful parts of the book are the characters and the themes discussed. Most of the characters are fully formed and well developed, and each has been hurt by the First Night in a different way. The adults hide from the horrors of what they experienced by furiously clinging onto the monotonous patterns of life inside the walled town. The teens grew up hating zombies and conforming to the life they grew up in, but never truly facing the living dead outside their door. Some teens, like Benny, hate the zombies with a passion, but most adults recognize that the zombies used to be people, someone that they loved, and continue their lives in a melancholy monotony.
While the book contains some minor romance and the unnerving potential to form an idiotic love triangle in future installments, the most important relationship building is between Benny and Tom. The two Imura brothers have been estranged for years, but their shared experiences in the Rot & Ruin brings them together in an emotional and impactful way.
This 458 page book earns 4.5 stars.
Rot & Ruin
On the First Night, the dead rose, hungry for the lives of the living. The human population was decimated, with billions dead, but years later, mankind began to take refuge inside walled of cities.