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janaroos 's review for:
Rot & Ruin
by Jonathan Maberry
Finally getting around to the review.
So this was reasonably fun. I don't expect a lot of originality or innovation from a zombie book and I didn't really get any. Fairly straightforward to the point of being predictable, but Benny is a pretty realistic and quite endearing hero. The romantic subplot was kept out of the way of the actual plot and even though there was the threat of a love triangle the author maturely avoided it. I have only two concerns:
1. Tom Imura. He is a cool character, classic zombie-hunter-awesome-samurai-sword guy as well as incorporating an admirable morality. Definitely a good hero. However, Tom seems to be little more than a tool for the author to info dump, and to provide Benny with some training. It would have been nice if he were more fleshed out and real, instead of a bit of the mentor stereotype (who, I suspect, is definitely going to die to provide motivation to the hero and leave the 'awesome gentleman' gap later to be filled by the hero. Sigh. I say I don't need originality but just a LITTLE bit would be nice)(this is not a spoiler because I don't know if Tom is going to die, except that he most definitely will according to the laws of fiction).
2. The zombies. I like my zombies visceral, inhuman monsters roving for flesh. Maberry decided on a different route, humanising the dead and reminding us they were once human and you shouldn't desecrate corpses and all that. Now that's fine if that's the way you want to go, but it has the problematic side-effect of making the zombies decidedly less scary. These are the things you're meant to be threatening the hero with, but I'm not going to take that threat seriously if it keeps moping around its old house, staring passively at the walls. Pity and fear don't really go together.
I'll read the next books when I get a post-apocalyptic craving again, but there had better be some more gore. At the moment, Maberry is very far from the Rage-virus-walker end of the spectrum, ending up closer to Plants vs Zombies.
So this was reasonably fun. I don't expect a lot of originality or innovation from a zombie book and I didn't really get any. Fairly straightforward to the point of being predictable, but Benny is a pretty realistic and quite endearing hero. The romantic subplot was kept out of the way of the actual plot and even though there was the threat of a love triangle the author maturely avoided it. I have only two concerns:
1. Tom Imura. He is a cool character, classic zombie-hunter-awesome-samurai-sword guy as well as incorporating an admirable morality. Definitely a good hero. However, Tom seems to be little more than a tool for the author to info dump, and to provide Benny with some training. It would have been nice if he were more fleshed out and real, instead of a bit of the mentor stereotype (who, I suspect, is definitely going to die to provide motivation to the hero and leave the 'awesome gentleman' gap later to be filled by the hero. Sigh. I say I don't need originality but just a LITTLE bit would be nice)(this is not a spoiler because I don't know if Tom is going to die, except that he most definitely will according to the laws of fiction).
2. The zombies. I like my zombies visceral, inhuman monsters roving for flesh. Maberry decided on a different route, humanising the dead and reminding us they were once human and you shouldn't desecrate corpses and all that. Now that's fine if that's the way you want to go, but it has the problematic side-effect of making the zombies decidedly less scary. These are the things you're meant to be threatening the hero with, but I'm not going to take that threat seriously if it keeps moping around its old house, staring passively at the walls. Pity and fear don't really go together.
I'll read the next books when I get a post-apocalyptic craving again, but there had better be some more gore. At the moment, Maberry is very far from the Rage-virus-walker end of the spectrum, ending up closer to Plants vs Zombies.