Rot and Ruin by Jonathan Maberry

Rot and Ruin is set in a post-apocalyptic zombie infested California where a group of survivors have formed a community about fourteen years after First Night, the night the zombies rose from the dead. Benny Imura, on his fifteenth birthday has to look for a job in order to earn his rations. After sifting through several jobs that he didn’t like or wasn’t cut out for, he joins his half-brother Tom in the family business—killing zombies. Tom is strong both physically and mentally, honorable, and a great person to have on your side during a zombie apocalypse, but despite this, his brother doesn’t like him because he feels Tom abandoned his parents on First Night.



The second half of the novel is much better than the first half, where not a whole lot happens. Where it heats up is when the legend of the Lost Girl is mentioned. Benny feels a strange connection to her, someone Tom has been searching for years for. This is the impetus to set them against the story’s villains, also zombie hunters, who want to kill the Lost Girl because of her knowledge of the Gamelands, where kids are pitted without weapons in fights against zombies. An attack on their community leads Benny and Tom in a collision course with the villains.



The writing in this novel is top notch. The pace of the first half is slow but gets much better in the second half. I liked the world-building. Although this isn’t a fresh take on zombie fiction, it is exceptionally well done. My biggest problem with the novel is that Benny, unlike Tom, is not a very likable character. He is whiny and generally annoying. Granted, he gets better as the story unfolds, but as far as protagonists go, I wasn’t particularly impressed with him. Otherwise, this was an enjoyable piece of zombie fiction.