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A review by jestersandpages
Rot & Ruin by Jonathan Maberry
2.0
I don't recommend this unless you really really love being morally beaten and reading about zombies. Easy to put down and doesn't really draw you in at all. Only finished it for the sake of finishing the review and seeing just how dumb the ending could possibly be.
Alright I must have bad luck with books this year, cause just like the first book I read this year, this book sucked.
This book would have been better if the first half of it didn't exist. The book doesn't get actually good until chapter 47. Everything before that is Moral throat stuffing, excessive talking and near pointless filler.
The main over arching aspect of this book is morality, and the book beats you over the head with it.
For summary:
The main character, Benny, is the younger sibling of Moral token hunter Tom. Everyone loves tom but the "evil" people because he is "Moral". Benny thinks he's weak but that's cause he doesn't know anything. All teens know nothing, all teens are bratty and childish. Benny had to get a job because he's 15 and eventually caved to being trained as a hunter by his brother. They go out into the rot and ruin and "everything changes". From there it's just a bunch of pointless talking, moral high ground and destroying a devious plot. The people behind the plot are evil, but only evil because of "morals". But at least destroying the devious plot is actually enjoyable to read and is the books only saving grace.
For characters:
Benny is relatable only in that he doesn't want to work and is frustrated at being talked down to constantly and people sticking their heads in the sand. This only last a few chapters. Other than that Benny is weirdly immature for a 15 year old. It's off putting. Seriously he sounds more like a 9/10 year old. Not only that but he's a bratty egotistical nosey 10 year old. He goes from being cold, calm and tough kid. To being a weak emotional mess that bares almost no resemblance to the previous person. Unless everyone now has emotional disorders this makes no sense and is emotional manipulation by the author and moral baiting for the readers. "If you act immoral you will be destroyed by emotions" *eyeroll*. Benny loves hearing gory stories from Charlie about torturing and killing zombies but then turns around and gags at it? This doesn't make any sense.
Tom, now no one ever shuts the hell up about tom. The entire book. He is a high as twenty horses morally righteous sword wielding sunshine glowing behind his head role model. I don't like him. He babies the hell out of Benny and constantly is right about everything.
The lost girl, she has a name but that would spoil things. Best character in the book. Insane, crazy, weird, tough and free. Of course that goes away when the righteous good moral guy gets involved. However she is completely out of place in the book. A book entirely about her and her expirences would be fantastic.
Charlie is a badass but of course badass tough people must be evil. That's all there is to his character.
Nix is just a token love interest and her BOOBIES are talked about more than she's in the book.
Stereotypes:
There's a fair amount of these and the book treats all these stereotypes as if they are totally true. (Hint most of them are rarely to never true.)
* The "girl has BOOBS, so she's a girl now" thus "I feel awkward around her now" stereotype. Very annoying stereotype at that.
* "Well your not a girl so you couldn't understand" Cringe.
* "These teens don't understand how the world works" and the book treats this tope as if it's a constany true thing. This is infuriating and insulting.
* Of course cool badass tough dudes are "evil" people *eye roll*
* Our generation messed everything up, your generation has to fix it. See at least this stereotype is true in the real world but it's framed horribly in the book.
For world building and story telling:
A couple of the chapters are just a page long and others are over 20 long. Frankly chapters should be at least reasonably the same length.
One chapter is just a page devoted to "old Benny wouldn't have done this" being repeated in different ways plus he's on a horse.
One chapter is just about children smiling creepily. Sure I enjoyed it but still, an entire chapter?
One entire page is just filled up with one person talking, no breaks. This is not how your write a book.
The author choose to go right from a traumatised emotion wreck of a kid weeping to a joke about zombie playing cards (collect them all!) this book doesn't know what it wants to be.
It makes no sense for a boy who's just been traumatised by zombies and now sees them as people to immediately buy some zombie trading cards that's not how trauma works.
A news reporter has shot themselves on camera in real life before. No one I knew said or thought "oh god". It was more like "wow" "hahaha" "well then" "that was neat" that's how a real teenager responds.
Spends a long time trying to build a relationship between Benny and tom and tring to make the reader feel close to and attached to tom. It doesn't work at all.
The build up to the romance and relationship thing is painfully obvious and doesn't feel remoelty "real". The two second love triangle is creepy and is obviously there for no other reason than tension. The entire relationship/romance thing is out of place in this book and shouldn't have even been included.
They try a little to pass the loner off as being bad speaker but she speaks far far far better than someone who never talks would.
There's some pretty great word play in the last two chapters. Pretty much no where else tho. "The right and left fist of violence" I love this description.
Finally, the 13th chapter is the most melodramatic thing I have ever read.
The book is broken down into 4 parts and these parts can be really easily summed up:
First part: 15 year old behaving like a 10 year old. Teenagers being babied and a bunch of religious Moral throat
stuffing.
Second part: two guys in a cabin. Excessive pointless talking. Conspiracy! Murder! Kidnapping! Got find that girl gotta find that girl gotta find that girl......
Third part: tracking, talking, tracking, talking, tracking, talking, tracking, BOMB! Trap! Death!
Fourth part: get the girl, really get the girl. Family destroyed and time to be sneaky. The kids have gone mad. A bunch of death and steoryoyical good ending. But everything is not the same! We're all changed! Home isn't home any more! Let's hit the road for the sake of the author being able to make a second book and leech some money out of people!
Some other things:
I hate the word "zoms". Like really hate it, you could probably see my face physically wince every time I read that word. Which was unfortunately a lot. The word Noms is even worse but is less frequent in the book.
The amount of babying everyone does to benny is infuriating and this shit is why teens get pissed at their parents and other like minded adults.
When the religious zealots came with their little bit of religious nonsense I really hoped that would be the end of the Jesus, God, almighty etc stuff. I was sadly mistaken. the book acknowledges "The Children" as being crazy but then it doesn't and paints them as the right moral ones and everyone else as idiots or evil.
Zombie pit fighting sounds like an awesome read but the book goes evangelical moral try hard on you.
The 47 chapter was great. Bunch of kids sitting around smiling dark bloody murder. To bad it's only just over a page long. Not sure how many pages you could devote to kids smiling like maniacs tho.
The epilogue is the best part of the book, the most real part of the book and it's not even one of the actual chapters.
Then there's "cards" in the end of the book. And good god is the lost girl's card sexualised. Underboob? Really? Shirt so tight and wet you see the entire outline of her breast? Really? A dagger pointing right at her crotch and slightly sticking under belt/into her pants? Really? Wtf.
Finally for the cover:
This cover is actually pretty darn neat and visually appealing. Will definitely catch the eye of any zombie fan and makes it very clear the books about zombies without telling you anything other than the main character is a boy and that the book is "dark". "This book is full of heart..." hahahahaha no more like filled with moral evangelicalism. Being exclusively moral doesn't equal having heart. The font and word placement is grade A good. To bad the cover looks better than the book reads.
Over all it was a dead read, even by zombie standards (haha). The women are oddly sexualised and at the most random of points. The entire point of the book is moral preaching and it tries to cover that up with zombies. This feels more like Christian fiction that YA zombie fiction. Finally it's far far too long for its content.
Alright I must have bad luck with books this year, cause just like the first book I read this year, this book sucked.
This book would have been better if the first half of it didn't exist. The book doesn't get actually good until chapter 47. Everything before that is Moral throat stuffing, excessive talking and near pointless filler.
The main over arching aspect of this book is morality, and the book beats you over the head with it.
For summary:
The main character, Benny, is the younger sibling of Moral token hunter Tom. Everyone loves tom but the "evil" people because he is "Moral". Benny thinks he's weak but that's cause he doesn't know anything. All teens know nothing, all teens are bratty and childish. Benny had to get a job because he's 15 and eventually caved to being trained as a hunter by his brother. They go out into the rot and ruin and "everything changes". From there it's just a bunch of pointless talking, moral high ground and destroying a devious plot. The people behind the plot are evil, but only evil because of "morals". But at least destroying the devious plot is actually enjoyable to read and is the books only saving grace.
For characters:
Benny is relatable only in that he doesn't want to work and is frustrated at being talked down to constantly and people sticking their heads in the sand. This only last a few chapters. Other than that Benny is weirdly immature for a 15 year old. It's off putting. Seriously he sounds more like a 9/10 year old. Not only that but he's a bratty egotistical nosey 10 year old. He goes from being cold, calm and tough kid. To being a weak emotional mess that bares almost no resemblance to the previous person. Unless everyone now has emotional disorders this makes no sense and is emotional manipulation by the author and moral baiting for the readers. "If you act immoral you will be destroyed by emotions" *eyeroll*. Benny loves hearing gory stories from Charlie about torturing and killing zombies but then turns around and gags at it? This doesn't make any sense.
Tom, now no one ever shuts the hell up about tom. The entire book. He is a high as twenty horses morally righteous sword wielding sunshine glowing behind his head role model. I don't like him. He babies the hell out of Benny and constantly is right about everything.
The lost girl, she has a name but that would spoil things. Best character in the book. Insane, crazy, weird, tough and free. Of course that goes away when the righteous good moral guy gets involved. However she is completely out of place in the book. A book entirely about her and her expirences would be fantastic.
Charlie is a badass but of course badass tough people must be evil. That's all there is to his character.
Nix is just a token love interest and her BOOBIES are talked about more than she's in the book.
Stereotypes:
There's a fair amount of these and the book treats all these stereotypes as if they are totally true. (Hint most of them are rarely to never true.)
* The "girl has BOOBS, so she's a girl now" thus "I feel awkward around her now" stereotype. Very annoying stereotype at that.
* "Well your not a girl so you couldn't understand" Cringe.
* "These teens don't understand how the world works" and the book treats this tope as if it's a constany true thing. This is infuriating and insulting.
* Of course cool badass tough dudes are "evil" people *eye roll*
* Our generation messed everything up, your generation has to fix it. See at least this stereotype is true in the real world but it's framed horribly in the book.
For world building and story telling:
A couple of the chapters are just a page long and others are over 20 long. Frankly chapters should be at least reasonably the same length.
One chapter is just a page devoted to "old Benny wouldn't have done this" being repeated in different ways plus he's on a horse.
One chapter is just about children smiling creepily. Sure I enjoyed it but still, an entire chapter?
One entire page is just filled up with one person talking, no breaks. This is not how your write a book.
The author choose to go right from a traumatised emotion wreck of a kid weeping to a joke about zombie playing cards (collect them all!) this book doesn't know what it wants to be.
It makes no sense for a boy who's just been traumatised by zombies and now sees them as people to immediately buy some zombie trading cards that's not how trauma works.
A news reporter has shot themselves on camera in real life before. No one I knew said or thought "oh god". It was more like "wow" "hahaha" "well then" "that was neat" that's how a real teenager responds.
Spends a long time trying to build a relationship between Benny and tom and tring to make the reader feel close to and attached to tom. It doesn't work at all.
The build up to the romance and relationship thing is painfully obvious and doesn't feel remoelty "real". The two second love triangle is creepy and is obviously there for no other reason than tension. The entire relationship/romance thing is out of place in this book and shouldn't have even been included.
They try a little to pass the loner off as being bad speaker but she speaks far far far better than someone who never talks would.
There's some pretty great word play in the last two chapters. Pretty much no where else tho. "The right and left fist of violence" I love this description.
Finally, the 13th chapter is the most melodramatic thing I have ever read.
The book is broken down into 4 parts and these parts can be really easily summed up:
First part: 15 year old behaving like a 10 year old. Teenagers being babied and a bunch of religious Moral throat
stuffing.
Second part: two guys in a cabin. Excessive pointless talking. Conspiracy! Murder! Kidnapping! Got find that girl gotta find that girl gotta find that girl......
Third part: tracking, talking, tracking, talking, tracking, talking, tracking, BOMB! Trap! Death!
Fourth part: get the girl, really get the girl. Family destroyed and time to be sneaky. The kids have gone mad. A bunch of death and steoryoyical good ending. But everything is not the same! We're all changed! Home isn't home any more! Let's hit the road for the sake of the author being able to make a second book and leech some money out of people!
Some other things:
I hate the word "zoms". Like really hate it, you could probably see my face physically wince every time I read that word. Which was unfortunately a lot. The word Noms is even worse but is less frequent in the book.
The amount of babying everyone does to benny is infuriating and this shit is why teens get pissed at their parents and other like minded adults.
When the religious zealots came with their little bit of religious nonsense I really hoped that would be the end of the Jesus, God, almighty etc stuff. I was sadly mistaken. the book acknowledges "The Children" as being crazy but then it doesn't and paints them as the right moral ones and everyone else as idiots or evil.
Zombie pit fighting sounds like an awesome read but the book goes evangelical moral try hard on you.
The 47 chapter was great. Bunch of kids sitting around smiling dark bloody murder. To bad it's only just over a page long. Not sure how many pages you could devote to kids smiling like maniacs tho.
The epilogue is the best part of the book, the most real part of the book and it's not even one of the actual chapters.
Then there's "cards" in the end of the book. And good god is the lost girl's card sexualised. Underboob? Really? Shirt so tight and wet you see the entire outline of her breast? Really? A dagger pointing right at her crotch and slightly sticking under belt/into her pants? Really? Wtf.
Finally for the cover:
This cover is actually pretty darn neat and visually appealing. Will definitely catch the eye of any zombie fan and makes it very clear the books about zombies without telling you anything other than the main character is a boy and that the book is "dark". "This book is full of heart..." hahahahaha no more like filled with moral evangelicalism. Being exclusively moral doesn't equal having heart. The font and word placement is grade A good. To bad the cover looks better than the book reads.
Over all it was a dead read, even by zombie standards (haha). The women are oddly sexualised and at the most random of points. The entire point of the book is moral preaching and it tries to cover that up with zombies. This feels more like Christian fiction that YA zombie fiction. Finally it's far far too long for its content.