Rot and Ruin: Response

First it was Vampires, then werewolves, now zombies. The trend of supernatural obsession in teens has held true once again. And what else better to fuel our love for zombies than “Rot and Ruin”. Rot and Ruin is about Benny Imura a fifteen year old, raised by his older brother Tom, living in the post apocalyptic waste land that was once the United States. Benny lives in Mountainside a settlement that refugees from the zombie outbreak have built up. Now that Benny is fifteen he has to find a part time job so that he can keep receiving full rations. After much deliberation and failed job hunts Benny agreed to join the family business with Tom. Even if being a professional zombie bounty hunter is extremely dangerous, Benny needs the job. 

                After their first trip into the rot and ruin, this is the outside world that is lacking law but has plenty when it comes to the three billion zombies. Benny realizes that the bounty hunters that he thought were so cool, are actually monsters and hunt the dead for sport; While Benny starts to understand what his brother tom does as a “closer specialist”. When they come back from the rot and ruin Benny is changed, and shortly after he gets a zombie card with the lost girl. Starting a horrific journey that no one was prepared for, even though the fall happened around fourteen years before.

                This was an amazing book, which had literally everything. I was constantly overwhelmed with emotion while reading this book, and had to fight with myself to put it down. This book made me smile, laugh, cry, and puzzle over how fragile our humanity is. I recommend this book to anyone, especially if you’re as enamored with zombies as I am. I can’t wait to read the second book "Dust and Decay".

“There are moments that define a person's whole life. Moments in which everything they are and everything they may possibly become balance on a single decision. Life and death, hope and despair, victory and failure teeter precariously on the decision made at that moment. These are moments ungoverned by happenstance, untroubled by luck. These are the moments in which a person earns the right to live, or not.”
― Jonathan Maberry, Rot & Ruin