Rot and Ruin By Jonathan Maberry

Posted by Rosanna on January 2, 2011 at 7:17am

 

 

Rot and Ruin

A dystopian coming of age story set fourteen years after an apocalyptic plague that wiped out most of humanity.  Specifically a zombie plague.  I riff off of the basic set-up in Night of the Living Dead but I explore what it's like to grow up in the world after everything's gone to hell.  There are only about thirty thousand people left alive, living in small towns scattered along the Sierra Nevadas in Central California.

In Rot & Ruin we meet fifteen year old Benny Imura.  His parents died during First Night -the initial outbreak--and he lives with his older half-brother, Tom, whom he hates and believes to be a coward who ran away and left their parents to die.

Tom is a zombie killer, a bounty hunter of a kind called a 'closure specialist'.  He's contracted by people to find relatives or friends who have become zombies.  Tom reads the last letter from the family and then puts the zom down.

Is Tom a coward?  Turns out that Benny needs a job and can't find one, so he has to apprentice with Tom or the town will cut his rations.

Lots of zombies?

Lots of zombies.  Three hundred million of them in the US alone, and they are the classic George Romero slow, shuffling variety.

At first glance, this appears to be a retelling of Carrie Ryan's The Forest of Hands and Teeth (Delacorte, 2009) but with a male protagonist. But Maberry's vision of a zombie-infested future has more action, more violence, and more emotional depth. Benny Imura was a baby when the zombie apocalypse happened. His first memory is of his mother handing him to his older half brother as she is being dragged down by his zombie-fied father. He resents Tom for leaving his mother, for running away. To Benny, Tom is a coward. To everyone else in their fenced-in town, Tom is the toughest, bravest zombie killer in California. As Benny approaches his 15th birthday, he must find a job or forfeit half of his food rations. After losing half a dozen jobs, he reluctantly agrees to work as Tom's apprentice in the “Family Business.” When they travel out into the Rot and Ruin, he witnesses things that change his opinion of his brother and forever alter his perception of the world. He also learns that flesh-eating zombies aren't the scariest or most dangerous monsters around. As with all zombie stories, this one requires a fairly large suspension of disbelief, but once the brothers enter the Rot and Ruin, readers become too wrapped up in the plot to dwell on some lapses of logic. The relationship between Benny and Tom becomes surprisingly complex and satisfying, as does the romantic subplot between Benny and his friend Nix. The length of the book may intimidate some reluctant readers but the striking cover, compelling action, and brutal violence will draw them in and keep them reading.–

Brian Hutchinson (Narrator)


96 kbps

11 parts

Part 1&2 of 11

Rot and Ruin 01-11.mp3

Rot and Ruin 02-11.mp3

You need to be a member of Times Past to add comments!

Join Times Past

Tags: horror, supernatural
Email me when people reply –
Follow

Replies

This reply was deleted.