ROT AND RUIN By Jonathan Maberry

Category: Horror/Science Fiction/Young Adult

               Benny Imura needs to find a job. He’s not your typical adolescent though, since 14 years ago on First Night a plague swept the nation leaving 6 billion zombies in its wake. This leaves Benny with a handful of available jobs in the small town he calls home. Should he be a fence checker? Lure away the zoms from the entrance to town to let cargo wagons pass? The beginning of this book was quite humorous, following Benny’s reluctant journey into responsibility. All his attempts to find jobs are half-hearted until his best friend Chong gets a job he enjoys, sitting atop a tower watching for zoms. Benny’s older brother and only relative is the infamous Tom Imura, known throughout the zombie wastelands (aka the Rot and Ruin) as a fierce and deadly “closure specialist”. Benny doesn't get the appeal and has never respected Tom since he stole into the night with Benny as a child on First Night and didn't rescue their mother or father. It’s an eye-opening experience into what a band of people would do to make themselves feel secure amid the collapse of their entire known world. But everything Benny  knows about people and circumstances in the community and beyond is not what is actually happening. Rot and Ruin is a coming of age story with the same themes as any other, but with a few twists that leave the reader questioning their own capacity to assume and judge. After Benny’s initial job hunt he takes an apprenticeship with his brother Tom, and they go into the Rot and Ruin to do a closure job. It’s on this journey that Benny begins to understand his brother, the truths about other bounty hunters, and the frightening reality that every one of those zombies was a person with a story just like Benny. Overall I really enjoyed this book, it kept me entertained and filled my head with dreams of samurai swords and fresh-eating zombies. Did I mention that? Tom Imura just happens to be trained in the art of samurai fighting. Immediately after reading this book I reached for it’s sequel, Dust & Decay.