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3.93 AVERAGE
3.93 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
fast-paced
Benny Imura and his brother don’t get along. He blames his brother Tom for the events of First Night when their parents died during the zombie uprising. Even though Tom’s supposedly a badass zombie hunter, Benny hasn’t seen any evidence of this and insists Tom’s a coward. Instead he hangs out with his friends a listens to tales from much cooler zombie hunters who help keep his small town safe. But when he starts asking questions about a young girl supposedly living in the wild, things go a little crazy. Now Benny and his brother are on a desperate mission to save their friends and they have no choice but to trust each other.
Guys, I love me a zombie book. Some of my favorite books ever are zombie books. There’s just something about the way they bring up questions about what makes someone human and what makes someone a monster that I find hugely compelling and this book was no different. It doesn’t help that it feels a lot like an episode of Supernatural either. Maberry creates a desolate wasteland in which America has succumbed to the zombie apocalypse and it’s such a haunting setting for the story and an apt metaphor for life. Survivors have created small towns to live in, away from the rest of the world which has been dubbed The Rot and Ruin. These settlement camps are actually tight knit communities of people trying to move on with their life, but having no idea how to do so. Most of the time, people live and die in these small spaces without ever trying to find something better out there and it’s heartbreaking, but also very real. Because who wants to tempt fate when a zombie horde could come along? People have a hard enough time breaking out of their comfort zones and trying to do something scary without a bunch of flesh eating monsters to worry about.
This book hits you heard with FAMILY FEELS. Tom Imura is one of the best characters I’ve come across in a while. He’s such an interesting mix of grace, honor, and obligation. He genuinely loves his little brother and wants to help build a world for him that will actually mean something in the end, that can offer him something more than just waiting to die. He serves as a great mentor and is a fully fleshed out almost main character. He’s the yin to Benny’s yang and it’s a truly wonderful and interesting dichotomy that’s explored between the brothers. Benny is a good protagonist in his own right and we spend most of the time in his head and you can actually feel and see him growing as a person as his journey into the zombie wasteland continues. He learns a lot about himself, his brother, and what it means to be a human being in a world of the dead. It brings up complex moral dilemmas in a very organic, beautiful way. There are times it does’t even feel like a young adult novel to me and instead reads like a haunting treatise on the human condition and the choices we make in order to live.
The pace is also pretty action packed and there were moments where I found myself holding my breath wondering what was going to happen next. The heart of this book, really, is the family aspect and the bond between brothers as they learn things about each other they didn’t know before. It’s of note that Benny and Tom don’t really know each other well at all in the beginning of this book even though they’re the only family they have left and they live in such a confined world and it really speaks to Maberry’s credit as a storyteller that their relationship progression was so rewarding and finely revealed. There is a bit of romance in the book as well, as Benny’s longtime friend Nix is a secondary character with a crush that becomes pretty complicated, but it’s by no means a focal point of the story. So if you like your YA novels with a little more emphasis on love of the romantic persuasion, you might be a bit disappointed. However, I’m sure this aspect is going to come into play in a much bigger way later in the series. All in all, I really enjoyed the book and have already Kindled the second installment.
Guys, I love me a zombie book. Some of my favorite books ever are zombie books. There’s just something about the way they bring up questions about what makes someone human and what makes someone a monster that I find hugely compelling and this book was no different. It doesn’t help that it feels a lot like an episode of Supernatural either. Maberry creates a desolate wasteland in which America has succumbed to the zombie apocalypse and it’s such a haunting setting for the story and an apt metaphor for life. Survivors have created small towns to live in, away from the rest of the world which has been dubbed The Rot and Ruin. These settlement camps are actually tight knit communities of people trying to move on with their life, but having no idea how to do so. Most of the time, people live and die in these small spaces without ever trying to find something better out there and it’s heartbreaking, but also very real. Because who wants to tempt fate when a zombie horde could come along? People have a hard enough time breaking out of their comfort zones and trying to do something scary without a bunch of flesh eating monsters to worry about.
This book hits you heard with FAMILY FEELS. Tom Imura is one of the best characters I’ve come across in a while. He’s such an interesting mix of grace, honor, and obligation. He genuinely loves his little brother and wants to help build a world for him that will actually mean something in the end, that can offer him something more than just waiting to die. He serves as a great mentor and is a fully fleshed out almost main character. He’s the yin to Benny’s yang and it’s a truly wonderful and interesting dichotomy that’s explored between the brothers. Benny is a good protagonist in his own right and we spend most of the time in his head and you can actually feel and see him growing as a person as his journey into the zombie wasteland continues. He learns a lot about himself, his brother, and what it means to be a human being in a world of the dead. It brings up complex moral dilemmas in a very organic, beautiful way. There are times it does’t even feel like a young adult novel to me and instead reads like a haunting treatise on the human condition and the choices we make in order to live.
The pace is also pretty action packed and there were moments where I found myself holding my breath wondering what was going to happen next. The heart of this book, really, is the family aspect and the bond between brothers as they learn things about each other they didn’t know before. It’s of note that Benny and Tom don’t really know each other well at all in the beginning of this book even though they’re the only family they have left and they live in such a confined world and it really speaks to Maberry’s credit as a storyteller that their relationship progression was so rewarding and finely revealed. There is a bit of romance in the book as well, as Benny’s longtime friend Nix is a secondary character with a crush that becomes pretty complicated, but it’s by no means a focal point of the story. So if you like your YA novels with a little more emphasis on love of the romantic persuasion, you might be a bit disappointed. However, I’m sure this aspect is going to come into play in a much bigger way later in the series. All in all, I really enjoyed the book and have already Kindled the second installment.
Well, you know it's going to be an awkward reading experience when you get a YA "fantasy" book with a 15 year old protagonist and your own teen years are behind you for some time now. Tho, sometimes you get pleasantly surprised by it, but this is not the case.
My biggest problem with this book is how naively it is written. Ok, like I said the protagonist is a 15yo boy and he is in his kind of rebel fase, but man, what's too much is too much. You can't convince me that he doesn't know what his brother is doing, that he changes his mind so easily, he fells in love with a picture and the plot twist are even more naive and I've guessed them all.
The zombies are background noise throughout most of this book and sometimes even literally just that even in climax scenes. And the lesson in ethics - "zombies are human too" is just unrealistic. I mean, ok, it was someone's dad, but now he is gonna eat you, so just kill him. Don't torture, don't humiliate it, but kill it or you are never going to reclaim the world.
The thing I did like is that the life in new settlements is well described and it's normal to expect people get all medieval and scared and the questionable social organisations are likely to be see the light. But that's it. That's the only good part. And I won't even talk about the romance part because it's just too cringy to repeat it.
My biggest problem with this book is how naively it is written. Ok, like I said the protagonist is a 15yo boy and he is in his kind of rebel fase, but man, what's too much is too much. You can't convince me that he doesn't know what his brother is doing, that he changes his mind so easily, he fells in love with a picture and the plot twist are even more naive and I've guessed them all.
The zombies are background noise throughout most of this book and sometimes even literally just that even in climax scenes. And the lesson in ethics - "zombies are human too" is just unrealistic. I mean, ok, it was someone's dad, but now he is gonna eat you, so just kill him. Don't torture, don't humiliate it, but kill it or you are never going to reclaim the world.
The thing I did like is that the life in new settlements is well described and it's normal to expect people get all medieval and scared and the questionable social organisations are likely to be see the light. But that's it. That's the only good part. And I won't even talk about the romance part because it's just too cringy to repeat it.
The ratings from my friends on this book are all over the place. Some loved it-some hated it. I almost took it back to the library without reading it because of that. Glad I gave it a go.
Benny is a typical teenager in the beginning of this book. I didn't like his smart little butt and spent most of the time wanting to smack some sense into his head. Honestly, he kind reminds me of Carl from the Walking Dead. I couldn't stand that kid in the beginning of the series and half the time now I want to knock him one. He has started to come into his own now though and sometimes I see a spark of what he could become.
Benny has to find a job or his food rations will be cut. (They live in a town that everyone has to have a job in order to eat) He goes through several jobs just slacking off hoping to find something easy to do. He finally ends up going out into the "Ruin" with his older brother Tom as an apprentice to bounty hunting zombies. Tom is half asian and badass with a sword. (He kinda reminds me of Glenn from Walking dead) He is thought of by his brother as a coward and no where as cool as the other bounty hunters that brag about their kills.
Out in the Ruin this book came alive for me. I flipping loved it. There are always questions in this type of story about who the bad guys are? Is it the living? Who want power? Is it the zoms? Who only need to feed?
I couldn't put this book down. I will be stalking down the sequels to this story-I need to know if it stays this good or fizzles.
Benny is a typical teenager in the beginning of this book. I didn't like his smart little butt and spent most of the time wanting to smack some sense into his head. Honestly, he kind reminds me of Carl from the Walking Dead. I couldn't stand that kid in the beginning of the series and half the time now I want to knock him one. He has started to come into his own now though and sometimes I see a spark of what he could become.
Benny has to find a job or his food rations will be cut. (They live in a town that everyone has to have a job in order to eat) He goes through several jobs just slacking off hoping to find something easy to do. He finally ends up going out into the "Ruin" with his older brother Tom as an apprentice to bounty hunting zombies. Tom is half asian and badass with a sword. (He kinda reminds me of Glenn from Walking dead) He is thought of by his brother as a coward and no where as cool as the other bounty hunters that brag about their kills.
Out in the Ruin this book came alive for me. I flipping loved it. There are always questions in this type of story about who the bad guys are? Is it the living? Who want power? Is it the zoms? Who only need to feed?
I couldn't put this book down. I will be stalking down the sequels to this story-I need to know if it stays this good or fizzles.
This book has a very amataure writing style and I didn't feel sucked into the story as much as I had hoped.
adventurous
dark
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
If you want to write about zombies, you'd better have a new point to make. They're just so obvious a metaphor nowadays and there are already such good post-apocalyptic books out there the bar keeps getting raised. I was let down by Courtney Summer's [b:This is Not a Test|12043771|This is Not a Test|Courtney Summers|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1314375864s/12043771.jpg|17010494], which was just a shade too bleak (no, scratch that, I like bleak - it's just too bleah). On the other hand, [b:The Reapers Are the Angels|8051458|The Reapers Are the Angels (Reapers, #1)|Alden Bell|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1317066698s/8051458.jpg|12707063] was so good I thought it covered almost everything there was to say about a desolate America.
Maberry does manage to cook up something quite interesting in this 450+ pager: a world where zombies have to be kept at bay, but with compassion and awareness of what they had once been. The protagonist, Benny Imura, learns this from his brother, Tom, who does the work of a 'closure specialist' (though he can loosely be classified as a 'bounty hunter', he hates the term). Estranged at the beginning of the book, they slowly become closer as Benny becomes Tom's apprentice out of necessity (15-year-olds need to work in order to obtain rations). The dialogue between the brothers is pretty amusing, and I laughed out loud a couple of times, though Tom does begin to sound a little too big-brother with his 'kiddo's, after a while.
I don't know about the length of the book and the reason for the brothers' estrangement though. The scope's rather ambitious, and yet I don't see as much of Benny's friends (Chong and Morgie in particular) as I would have liked. And as for the latter,? So, I don't know about reading the next book in the series (usually a sign of a 4-star 'series' book for me).
Maberry does manage to cook up something quite interesting in this 450+ pager: a world where zombies have to be kept at bay, but with compassion and awareness of what they had once been. The protagonist, Benny Imura, learns this from his brother, Tom, who does the work of a 'closure specialist' (though he can loosely be classified as a 'bounty hunter', he hates the term). Estranged at the beginning of the book, they slowly become closer as Benny becomes Tom's apprentice out of necessity (15-year-olds need to work in order to obtain rations). The dialogue between the brothers is pretty amusing, and I laughed out loud a couple of times, though Tom does begin to sound a little too big-brother with his 'kiddo's, after a while.
I don't know about the length of the book and the reason for the brothers' estrangement though. The scope's rather ambitious, and yet I don't see as much of Benny's friends (Chong and Morgie in particular) as I would have liked. And as for the latter,
Spoiler
how could Tom possibly not have the chance to explain the truth behind Benny's childhood memories of what happened to his mother, before Benny turned 15
adventurous
dark
emotional
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Should've been about Tom..
When is Dust & Decay coming out?! I flew through this book, and can't wait for more!
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated