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3.93 AVERAGE
3.93 AVERAGE
Years ago I read a short story that stayed with me, about a man with a sword who hunted zombies long after civilization fell. He only hunted specific zombies and laid them to rest when their families asked for it.
After reading and finishing the Joe Ledger series, I found this book in my queue and decided to read it.
Jon Maberry writes engaging fiction no matter what universe he's writing about, and manages to capture in this book some of what defines fear, and hope. Definitely a great read!
After reading and finishing the Joe Ledger series, I found this book in my queue and decided to read it.
Jon Maberry writes engaging fiction no matter what universe he's writing about, and manages to capture in this book some of what defines fear, and hope. Definitely a great read!
This is a zombie book with heart and soul. Truly a coming of age story, the setting ensures its readability and attraction to the 15 and up age group - I think it is a bit gory and haunting for younger readers, and more importantly, they would not appreciate its higher agenda. This book is compared not without reason to Lord of the Flies, as its concern is to define human nature without pulling any punches. Humans are portrayed, finally, as truly more frightening than the Zombies they fight, exploit and torture for the amusement and betting rights of the lowlifes.
In the brutality of this post-holocaust dystopian world in which survival of the fittest is the only rule, most of its living citizens don't fall into complete savagery, but are ruled by fear and denial, which erodes their spirit as surely as the Zombie disease degrades the bodies of its victims outside the fences of the human world. The sensitive ones on the inside are haunted by their perception of the erosion of their values and the shrinkage of the group to whom they are loyal - what is left of the concept of family. One or two go beyond this and become heroes - completely unpredictable by type until they are placed into the situations where choices must be made between morality or self-serving protection, and this rings true.
Tom and Benny Imura are in the end two of the few good guys, damaged and limping and hurting and faltering, they feel thousands of pinpricks of pain from the betrayals of inaction, inadequacy and apathy of those around them, and the tragedy of the loss of their own family. In the end these heroes are left with the task of finally 'quieting' the zombies to sleep, so that they can finally die - a life spent killing in order to preserve a memory of the humans that once lived in those bodies, and an ironic way for the most compassionate and unselfish of the characters in this book to earn their survival rations.
Quite an achievement that at the end of this fine novel we are left in the opposite position that we started in: the zombies are objects of pity and most humans lack any redeeming features. The 'cool' people are cowards, and the hope for the future lies in the dangerous outlands inhabited by the zombies. At least the bad creatures who live there lack evil intent and the consciousness of evil: prescient humans can achieve far greater levels of callousness and disregard..
In the brutality of this post-holocaust dystopian world in which survival of the fittest is the only rule, most of its living citizens don't fall into complete savagery, but are ruled by fear and denial, which erodes their spirit as surely as the Zombie disease degrades the bodies of its victims outside the fences of the human world. The sensitive ones on the inside are haunted by their perception of the erosion of their values and the shrinkage of the group to whom they are loyal - what is left of the concept of family. One or two go beyond this and become heroes - completely unpredictable by type until they are placed into the situations where choices must be made between morality or self-serving protection, and this rings true.
Tom and Benny Imura are in the end two of the few good guys, damaged and limping and hurting and faltering, they feel thousands of pinpricks of pain from the betrayals of inaction, inadequacy and apathy of those around them, and the tragedy of the loss of their own family. In the end these heroes are left with the task of finally 'quieting' the zombies to sleep, so that they can finally die - a life spent killing in order to preserve a memory of the humans that once lived in those bodies, and an ironic way for the most compassionate and unselfish of the characters in this book to earn their survival rations.
Quite an achievement that at the end of this fine novel we are left in the opposite position that we started in: the zombies are objects of pity and most humans lack any redeeming features. The 'cool' people are cowards, and the hope for the future lies in the dangerous outlands inhabited by the zombies. At least the bad creatures who live there lack evil intent and the consciousness of evil: prescient humans can achieve far greater levels of callousness and disregard..
Corny and written for teens, but entertaining. I'm sure I will read the rest of the series at some point.
Actual rating: 3.5 stars
Have you had “the conversation” with your loved ones? You know, the one where you discuss end-of-life plans, such as cremation or burial or what to do in case you’re bitten during the zombie apocalypse? If you haven’t, take a break from reading this review and go do it now.
Ready? Okay.
Benny Imura lives in post-zombie-apocalypse small town America. Now that he’s turned 15, he has to get a job and be a contributing member of non-zombie society. Most people think he will become a zombie hunter like his older brother Tom, but Benny despises Tom for his cowardly ways during the z-pocalypse, when Tom carried baby Benny to safety instead of saving their mother. So even though Benny totally idolizes these other zombie hunters – Charlie and the Hammer is what I call them (what a perfect name for a band!) – he toodles around trying out various jobs, searching for the perfect combination of the highest paying job requiring the least amount of work and ends up . . . guess what? . . a zombie hunter. Because all of his other choices either gross him out (shoveling and burning corpses) or bore him to death (watchtower duties) or seem stupidly risky (testing the fences that keep out the zombie horde). The only other one he’s interested in is zombie portraiture (drawing people’s loved ones in zombie face, called erosion art), which serves as a combination between a Wanted poster for the hunters and memento mori for the family, but he sucks at it.
Benny learns quickly from Tom that being a zom hunter is not all guts and glory, because Tom specializes in a touchy-feely kind of zombie hunting called closure. This involves finding and catching a zombie on behalf of their loved ones and saying some words over it, like you would at a funeral, before offing it as humanely as possible. This is apparently more emotional than just shooting it in the head, because in order to do it you have to see it as a real person and not a thing that wants to turn you into a chew toy.
I had problems with Tom’s ideas of closure. I don’t think Tom’s approach is quite as spiritual as it’s made out to be, and I don’t think a practical approach – killing zombies just so they can’t kill you first – is a bad one. It doesn’t automatically make you evil. True, good zombie stories are about recognizing how the zombies used to be us, and how we could easily become one of them, and how different people respond to that fear, and how all of those responses add up to complete social breakdown or radical change. Zombie stories should always have an element of social commentary. But once you recognize that the zombies used to be us and whatnot, you kill them. I mean, you wouldn’t want to be a zombie, would you? I think it’s your responsibility to your loved ones to make sure they’re not left gnawing off people’s faces for eternity. (If you had “the conversation” with your loved ones and they didn’t say they would lovingly and with great determination put your zombie self down, you might want to rethink that relationship. Just sayin’.)
Honestly, I could accept this angle – it’s Tom’s philosophy to try and honor the people the zoms used to be, and that’s fine; at least it’s unique – if it didn’t mean so much talking. So much preaching. Tom basically takes Benny to the Ruin and talks him to death, then takes him home and talks him to death some more. A lot of the dialogue in this book is really good – funny, natural, distinctive – but it never feels more stilted then when Tom is on one of his epic tellings, whether he’s giving crucial pages of backstory or trying to covert Benny to his way of thinking. I half expected Tom to bust out a PowerPoint slideshow to better convey his talking points (if, you know, they’d had electricity).
This is sad, because Tom is a BAMF, otherwise, (I really enjoyed the few times Tom got to bust out his jug o’ whoop-ass). His exasperated relationship with Benny is the strongest in the book, because it’s the one that shows that most change. I look forward to seeing their relationship develop into an even more trusting, superhero/sidekick thing in the next book. I didn’t care one way or another about Nix – romance/sex is a big part of life for teens, so I’m fine if authors want to add in a romance as long as it develops organically or makes sense with the rest of the story. Benny and Nix are interested in each other from the start of the book but are both too prickly and stupid (in Benny’s case) to do something about it until Nix almost gets killed. Makes sense to me.
Oh, and then there’s a plot that sounds like it will be the main one – some zom hunters have capitalized on the lawlessness of the Ruin to host Gameland (which I keep wanting to call the Z-Games for some reason), for which they abduct people and force them to fight zombies. Unfortunately, it seems like a side plot for all the development it gets; the other side plot is looking for the Lost Girl, an infamous hunter who lives in the Ruin and who may or may not have a bead on where Gameland is. The point of both of these side plots is to show how wrong it is to torture zombies and treat them inhumanely just because you can get away with it; eventually, your black soul will spill over into treating humans the same way. (This is one of the Social Commentary moments that is a decent one but feels rammed down the throat by all Tom’s speechifying.)
Maberry had lots of little touches that made this future scenario seem realistic, though. One was the zombie cards the kids collected. (I imagined the ones of infamous zombies looking kind of like Garbage Pail kids – oh crap, did I just date myself?) Yes, the idea of the cards is also corny, but I think they show not only how entrenched zombies are in this world, but also how zombie hunters are now the equivalent of today’s pop stars. Benny and his friend Chong bouncing from job to job, all of which were unique ways of showing what living in this society was like, also amused me greatly. And even though this is zombie novel de rigueur, the idea that people, after having suffered the terror, violence, and social upheaval of a zombie uprising, are willing to accept very restricted, regulated lives is portrayed well here. It makes sense that people have developed an entirely superstitious fear of change, progress, and development, ironically portrayed as being afraid to return to “the old days”, when they had modern comforts like electricity but were somehow not as safe as they should have been. Like they are all better off now. I find it interesting to compare with Mira Grant’s Feed, for example, which posits a post-z-pocalpyse that is totally dependent on technology but nevertheless has a similar message.
Overall, I could have used more balance between the action (which is pretty great when it happens) and the talking, and I could have used more scary moments with the zombies in addition to the scary moments with the evil black soulless humans, but I’m intrigued enough by the set-up for the next book and characters to continue with the series.
Have you had “the conversation” with your loved ones? You know, the one where you discuss end-of-life plans, such as cremation or burial or what to do in case you’re bitten during the zombie apocalypse? If you haven’t, take a break from reading this review and go do it now.
Ready? Okay.
Benny Imura lives in post-zombie-apocalypse small town America. Now that he’s turned 15, he has to get a job and be a contributing member of non-zombie society. Most people think he will become a zombie hunter like his older brother Tom, but Benny despises Tom for his cowardly ways during the z-pocalypse, when Tom carried baby Benny to safety instead of saving their mother. So even though Benny totally idolizes these other zombie hunters – Charlie and the Hammer is what I call them (what a perfect name for a band!) – he toodles around trying out various jobs, searching for the perfect combination of the highest paying job requiring the least amount of work and ends up . . . guess what? . . a zombie hunter. Because all of his other choices either gross him out (shoveling and burning corpses) or bore him to death (watchtower duties) or seem stupidly risky (testing the fences that keep out the zombie horde). The only other one he’s interested in is zombie portraiture (drawing people’s loved ones in zombie face, called erosion art), which serves as a combination between a Wanted poster for the hunters and memento mori for the family, but he sucks at it.
Benny learns quickly from Tom that being a zom hunter is not all guts and glory, because Tom specializes in a touchy-feely kind of zombie hunting called closure. This involves finding and catching a zombie on behalf of their loved ones and saying some words over it, like you would at a funeral, before offing it as humanely as possible. This is apparently more emotional than just shooting it in the head, because in order to do it you have to see it as a real person and not a thing that wants to turn you into a chew toy.
I had problems with Tom’s ideas of closure. I don’t think Tom’s approach is quite as spiritual as it’s made out to be, and I don’t think a practical approach – killing zombies just so they can’t kill you first – is a bad one. It doesn’t automatically make you evil. True, good zombie stories are about recognizing how the zombies used to be us, and how we could easily become one of them, and how different people respond to that fear, and how all of those responses add up to complete social breakdown or radical change. Zombie stories should always have an element of social commentary. But once you recognize that the zombies used to be us and whatnot, you kill them. I mean, you wouldn’t want to be a zombie, would you? I think it’s your responsibility to your loved ones to make sure they’re not left gnawing off people’s faces for eternity. (If you had “the conversation” with your loved ones and they didn’t say they would lovingly and with great determination put your zombie self down, you might want to rethink that relationship. Just sayin’.)
Honestly, I could accept this angle – it’s Tom’s philosophy to try and honor the people the zoms used to be, and that’s fine; at least it’s unique – if it didn’t mean so much talking. So much preaching. Tom basically takes Benny to the Ruin and talks him to death, then takes him home and talks him to death some more. A lot of the dialogue in this book is really good – funny, natural, distinctive – but it never feels more stilted then when Tom is on one of his epic tellings, whether he’s giving crucial pages of backstory or trying to covert Benny to his way of thinking. I half expected Tom to bust out a PowerPoint slideshow to better convey his talking points (if, you know, they’d had electricity).
This is sad, because Tom is a BAMF, otherwise, (I really enjoyed the few times Tom got to bust out his jug o’ whoop-ass). His exasperated relationship with Benny is the strongest in the book, because it’s the one that shows that most change. I look forward to seeing their relationship develop into an even more trusting, superhero/sidekick thing in the next book. I didn’t care one way or another about Nix – romance/sex is a big part of life for teens, so I’m fine if authors want to add in a romance as long as it develops organically or makes sense with the rest of the story. Benny and Nix are interested in each other from the start of the book but are both too prickly and stupid (in Benny’s case) to do something about it until Nix almost gets killed. Makes sense to me.
Oh, and then there’s a plot that sounds like it will be the main one – some zom hunters have capitalized on the lawlessness of the Ruin to host Gameland (which I keep wanting to call the Z-Games for some reason), for which they abduct people and force them to fight zombies. Unfortunately, it seems like a side plot for all the development it gets; the other side plot is looking for the Lost Girl, an infamous hunter who lives in the Ruin and who may or may not have a bead on where Gameland is. The point of both of these side plots is to show how wrong it is to torture zombies and treat them inhumanely just because you can get away with it; eventually, your black soul will spill over into treating humans the same way. (This is one of the Social Commentary moments that is a decent one but feels rammed down the throat by all Tom’s speechifying.)
Maberry had lots of little touches that made this future scenario seem realistic, though. One was the zombie cards the kids collected. (I imagined the ones of infamous zombies looking kind of like Garbage Pail kids – oh crap, did I just date myself?) Yes, the idea of the cards is also corny, but I think they show not only how entrenched zombies are in this world, but also how zombie hunters are now the equivalent of today’s pop stars. Benny and his friend Chong bouncing from job to job, all of which were unique ways of showing what living in this society was like, also amused me greatly. And even though this is zombie novel de rigueur, the idea that people, after having suffered the terror, violence, and social upheaval of a zombie uprising, are willing to accept very restricted, regulated lives is portrayed well here. It makes sense that people have developed an entirely superstitious fear of change, progress, and development, ironically portrayed as being afraid to return to “the old days”, when they had modern comforts like electricity but were somehow not as safe as they should have been. Like they are all better off now. I find it interesting to compare with Mira Grant’s Feed, for example, which posits a post-z-pocalpyse that is totally dependent on technology but nevertheless has a similar message.
Overall, I could have used more balance between the action (which is pretty great when it happens) and the talking, and I could have used more scary moments with the zombies in addition to the scary moments with the evil black soulless humans, but I’m intrigued enough by the set-up for the next book and characters to continue with the series.
4.5 stars. Benny and his much older brother Tom are residents of one of the only rebuilt, fenced towns in northern California following the zombie apocalypse. Tom's job involved going out into the Rot and Ruin (everywhere that's not enclosed by fences) to seek out specific zombies to end their non-lives. By severing their spinal column from their brains, but gently and with compassion. I am a big fan and advocate of young adult lit, but I am not a fan of zombies, or even books about zombies. I didn't expect to love this book, though I was willing to give it a chance. A page or two in, I realized that it was really a book about a complicated relationship between brothers, and I thought I might like it a lot. By the halfway point of the book, dripping in zombie gore, I realized it was all that AND a violent zombie book, too, but I already loved it.
There may be spoilers here, so if you have not read this book already, I advise you to discontinue reading this review.
When I saw the cover and the title, I was intrigued. I expected something from this book - something completely different from what it turned out to be. Nevertheless, that does not immediately mean that it's not a good book; it is a good book, but not a great one. I thought the writing style was good as some parts of the story were hilarious and others were very vividly described (which I liked). What I did not appreciate was the pace at which the story was told; the first 200 pages of the book (first half of the book) was quite slow-paced. It eventually got better as I reached the second half of the book, but even then, there were still some elements that I just couldn't quite enjoy. The fact that there were some mistakes - grammatical and spelling mistakes - irritated me greatly (especially since the story was slow-paced). The thing is, my judgement of this book may not be accurate at the moment because I wasn't in the mood for stories that involved a protagonist in their early teens. Benny was an okay protagonist in my opinion. I liked Tom better and I thought he would make a much better protagonist. But I understand that the book was also about growing up and realizing that life is not all rainbows and fluffy bunnies (that's the message I got from the story, anyway). I also liked that Benny matured by the end of the last page of the book. I intend on reading the second book, just not yet. The second book is much longer (around 500 pages) and I just don't feel like reading slow-paced books two times in a row. Also, I've had my fair share of zombie fiction. It's time for a little change.
When I saw the cover and the title, I was intrigued. I expected something from this book - something completely different from what it turned out to be. Nevertheless, that does not immediately mean that it's not a good book; it is a good book, but not a great one. I thought the writing style was good as some parts of the story were hilarious and others were very vividly described (which I liked). What I did not appreciate was the pace at which the story was told; the first 200 pages of the book (first half of the book) was quite slow-paced. It eventually got better as I reached the second half of the book, but even then, there were still some elements that I just couldn't quite enjoy. The fact that there were some mistakes - grammatical and spelling mistakes - irritated me greatly (especially since the story was slow-paced). The thing is, my judgement of this book may not be accurate at the moment because I wasn't in the mood for stories that involved a protagonist in their early teens. Benny was an okay protagonist in my opinion. I liked Tom better and I thought he would make a much better protagonist. But I understand that the book was also about growing up and realizing that life is not all rainbows and fluffy bunnies (that's the message I got from the story, anyway). I also liked that Benny matured by the end of the last page of the book. I intend on reading the second book, just not yet. The second book is much longer (around 500 pages) and I just don't feel like reading slow-paced books two times in a row. Also, I've had my fair share of zombie fiction. It's time for a little change.
This is a slightly new take on zombies as in how they are viewed by the healthy people. Fast paced and with some twists. Great example of the genre. Dust and Decay next...
A zombie book that stands up above the rest. It was dark, but the real evil was found in the living this time. The zombies took a back burner to alot of drama that happens in a town. I loved the characters. Can't wait for the sequel!
This is a snorter about a lad, whose first job is with the family business. Its after the Zombie Apocalypse, and they're cleaning-up by disposing of "zoms". Needless to say, its hazardous waste disposal.
The zoms in this book are Romero-style zombies, like those found in Kirkman, Moore and Adlard's "Walking Dead".
I didn't realize the book was Young Adult. Yet reading it, I now think that young adult is a rather elastic classification.
I would not expect many young adults to be familiar with the vocabulary the author uses in places. Sentence structure is very simple in most places, and then a 5-syllable word like "asceticism" appears. This can bring reading to a screeching halt. Where did that come from?
This is turned out to be a quick and amusing read that is fairly true to the conventional Zombie genre.
The zoms in this book are Romero-style zombies, like those found in Kirkman, Moore and Adlard's "Walking Dead".
I didn't realize the book was Young Adult. Yet reading it, I now think that young adult is a rather elastic classification.
I would not expect many young adults to be familiar with the vocabulary the author uses in places. Sentence structure is very simple in most places, and then a 5-syllable word like "asceticism" appears. This can bring reading to a screeching halt. Where did that come from?
This is turned out to be a quick and amusing read that is fairly true to the conventional Zombie genre.