Rot and Ruin by Jonathan Maberry

Title: Rot and Ruin (Benny Imura #1)

Author: Jonathan Maberry

Length: 458 Pages

Genres: YA, Horror, Zombies, Apocalyptic

Author's Website: http://www.jonathanmaberry.com

Synopsis:

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.

 (Cover Photo, Information and Synopsis from Goodreads)

Review: 

4/5 Stars

For me the story started out a little slow. There was a lot of promise, and a lot of little hints towards interesting things. But there were more hints than anything else at first. The story is written through the eyes of Benny Imura—a fifteen year old boy who grew up in this zombie infested world. 

Naturally, he’s irritated and a little unhappy that he’s old enough that he needs to get a job. But the whole process of him going from job to job, trying and failing isn’t interesting. It was just enough to keep me trucking alone. But once you hit the point where it gets good—it’s a good story.

For me—without spoiling anything—that point was Chapter Six, 44 pages in. Yes, 44 pages isn’t much to trudge through to get to the interesting part, but after this chapter there’s another little gap. You can see what the chapter’s for, and the purpose of it—but it’s not the most interesting thing in the world.

Once you get to the good part, the rest of the story is very well written. Benny and his brother Tom are very good characters, developed well with realistic logic and feelings. The plot is pretty well written too, excluding those little blips at the beginning. The author did a very good job at painting this post-apocalyptic world in your head through what Benny sees, and what stories he’s told about ‘First Night’—what they call the night everything happened. 

If you like Zombies, you’ll like the book. But if you’re not even a little bit patient with your stories, I don’t think I would bother with it. If you do decided to give it a chance; it’s a well develop, good story. It’s not the most thought provoking story, more of an easy read—but it’s good.