Rot & Ruin (udgave 2010)

I'm not a big zombie book reader, but this story has action, mystery and romance. It was reallly good! ( )

A more compassionate book on the zombie apocalypse. Benny is, at times, annoying and stubbornly obtuse but he comes around in the end. The plot and action were compelling enough to keep me reading and I finished most of the book in one day. ( )

Wow! Outstanding book - intricate and thoughtful and full of incredible world building details. Totally shed a tear at the end. Can't wait for the next in the series. One of the better YA novels I've read in a long time. ( )

One of the best post-apocalyptic novels I’ve read. It’s SO much more than zombies.....!
5 stars, and highly recommended ( )

Let's hear it for another intelligent, emotional, original, well-done, post-zombie apocalypse novel!

Benny Imura can't find a job, but at fifteen, he needs one badly in order to continue to get along in society. He would rather do anything but join his older brother Tom in the 'family business' of killing zombies. But options are slim, and the vast wildness of the zombie infested land called the Rot and Ruin needs clearing of its undead denizens. And so a very reluctant Benny, saddled with an all-consuming hatred of the creatures that killed his parents on the apocalyptic First Night, agrees to become Tom's apprentice.

Thus begins not only Benny's coming-of-age story, but an amazing tale that is part gruesome zombie novel, part action-packed Western, and altogether a book with more punch behind it than just a bunch of fight scenes and dismemberment (although there's plenty of that too). Kidnappings, murders, conspiracies, chases, twisted plans, and mythical legends all play a part.

I loved the originality of this book, with a main character who starts out as naive, short-tempered and mostly unlikeable only to trace a realistic path of discovery through a world both very different and yet with many resemblances to our own. I loved the way the author played the idea and "rules" of the zombies very straight, imbuing them with fear and suspense, but at the same urged the reader to see both the humanity and sympathy of such wretched creatures. I loved the idea of having zombie bounty hunters as much as I loved the idea of people who brought morality and empathy to the idea of closure and the "death" of the living dead. I loved the characters: Benny himself of course; his wise, badass, katana-wielding brother Tom; beautiful, bookish, increasingly awesome action girl Nix Riley; and the Lost Girl, an urban legend of a mute, feral girl who hunts the woods for corrupt male bounty hunters and zombies to murder with her bayonet spear. With a cast like this, how can this book not be great?

Lastly, the emotion in this novel had a lot more depth than I expected to find. Relationships are interestingly, amusingly, movingly crafted, and they change in realistic and gripping ways. Benny's dynamic with Tom, his shifting feelings about his brother's "job", about zombies, about good and evil, about life in the isolated village, about his own place in the world...all are well-done.

And of course I'm excited by the direction the book is taking and the plotlines it promises to bring up in the sequel; I want to see where these characters and this world go! ( )