BOOK REVIEW - ROT AND RUIN by JONATHAN MAYBERRY - BENNY IMURA # 1

By : Jonathan Maberry
Published By : Simon & Schuster
Released : Available Now
Details: Paperback from library, 458 Pages

RATING : 4.5 TOM STARS!!

Book Blurb : Taken From Goodreads

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.


BOOK REVIEW:


Rot and Ruin is book # 1 in the Benny Imura series. It sets us up with characters and gives us the visual picture in our mind of what their part of the world has turned into.


Tom Imura is this wonderful character who is patient, understanding, loving, compassionate but also fiercely protective , a warrior. He is this Obi Wan Kanobi type character, wise beyond his years.


Benny Imura is gullible, naive, young, the Luke Skywalker type character. He grows and learns life lessons with Tom. They go on Benny’s journey of discovery about the bigger picture of Tom and what he does for the mountainside people. Tom is taking Benny through the paces, showing him the way.


I love Tom. I also know this is called the Benny Imura series . I read in fear that something was going to happen to Tom, Benny and his friends.


Charlie and The Hammer, well it doesn’t get much worse when it comes to human beings adding to a world that has come to a standstill, not moving forward in a positive way. Evil and disgust is what comes to mind when thinking of those two and their followers.


Jonathan sacrifices characters and it makes the reader feel sad and how unfair the world is that humans add to the tragedy. His book really is quite an emotional ride. It's the humans truly causing the hurt.


I am enjoying this zombie book because it gives another take on the zombie genre. It’s not their fault they are like this. Through Tom's character the reader gets this whole new way of thinking. His compassion, made me sit up and say, you know what, that’s right.


It also gives hope to the reader that it’s not just like a lot of zombie stories that are basically hopeless , no way out ,the world can’t get better. Places like Mountainside being  just bandaids until civilization dies off and the world is totally consumed. What then? Jonathan gives the reader, using Nix who is a smart little thing, hope that some humans, no matter their age think differently, have hope. Does it have to stay like this? Why can’t we move forward, not stay where we will rot and then become the undead?


There are a couple scenes that had me holding my breath...visually I saw it all in my head, like in slow mo....there are enough zombie movies out there like ‘I Am Legend’, that help with the clarity of what it would actually be looking like. Instead of Will Smith walking those mangled car streets, it’s Benny and Tom and other survivors.


I feel such sadness for the Lost Child and what she went through. Humans can be so destructive to the soul . Tom was born to be a leader , helping to move the world forward, but it’s not that easy.... and then Jonathan throws in something that has you sticking your head up like a meerkat .


I really enjoyed Jonathan’s world , it wasn’t at all what I thought from looking at the cover, I have ‘Dust and Decay’ ready on my ereader, this little meerkat is very intrigued.

Michelle