Sunday, May 1, 2011

BOOK REVIEW: Rot & Ruin

Title: Rot & Ruin

Author: Jonathan Maberry

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

RRP: $16.99

ISBN: 9780857070951

Release Date: April 2011

Pages: 464



Description:

Nearly fourteen years ago a freak virus swept across the world turning those infected from the living into the undead. Benny Imura has grown-up never knowing anything different; his last memories of his parents tainted by the image of them becoming zombies. Now Benny is fifteen, and his brother Tom wants him to join the "family business" and train as a zombie killer. The last thing Benny wants is to work with Tom ¬¬- but at least the job should be an easy ride. Then the brothers head into the Rot and Ruin, an area full of wandering zombies, and Benny realises that being a bounty hunter isn't just about whacking zombies. As he's confronted with the truths about the world around him, Benny finds his beliefs challenged and makes the most terrifying discovery of all, that sometimes the worst monsters you can imagine, are human…


Review:

The US in the near future: most of the country has been deserted; people live together in small towns behind huge fences, shielding themselves against millions of zombies. Benny Imura lives in Mountainside, together with his half brother Tom, a zombie hunter, after his parents were killed and resurrected as zombies on First Night – the night the dead began to rise and threw the whole world into chaos.

The first couple chapters of this book were the most tremendously creative and in depth look at what it takes to survive a zombie apocalypse.

Benny and Chong just turned 15, and it is time for them to start looking for their zombietown survival-related jobs. The jobs were highly original and realistic, well as realistic as you can get for a book about people with Mad Human Disease.

ROT & RUIN is a perfect choice for readers who enjoyed THE FOREST OF HANDS AND TEETH. Both books take place in a small town of survivors surrounded by fences that keep the zombies out. ROT & RUIN is set in a time when people still remember what happened when the zombies started rising, so the reader gets some first-hand accounts of First Night (the night the world changed). ROT & RUIN also gives us some of the blood and gore that we sometimes want in a zombie novel.

No comments: