Review: Rot & Ruin
by Jonathan Maberry
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Imagine a zombie-infested world where more than half of the global population has been wiped out and most of the remaining humans have built a fence around themselves as protection from the living dead. Sounds passé, right? Everyone must have encountered such a setting in a George Romero flick. Now, pull out Holden Caufield from The Catcher in the Rye and throw him into the post-apocalyptic situation I just described. That’s more or less what you’ll get if you read Rot & Ruin by Jonathan Maberry.
A few days before his fifteenth birthday, Benny Imura must find a job to avoid his food rations from getting halved. That’s the rule in the Mountainside, a town that is separated from the great Rot and Ruin by a mere fence. Even if he’s not interested in taking the family business, Benny grudgingly agrees to be a zombie killer under the tutelage of his big brother, Tom. For a couple of personal reasons he doesn’t want to work with Tom, and from the very start he knows his apprenticeship is going to suck. What Benny gets from the experience are things that he doesn’t expect, and that includes valuable lessons that he will need for the rest of his life—not just the stuff about whacking zombies for cash, but also the importance of being human in a world that tells you to do otherwise.
I really enjoyed this book. The author took time in world-building at the beginning, and even though it wasn’t much of a good kick-off, it provided wide spaces for the characters to grow and for the readers to explore this zombie universe. I commend Maberry for an excellent example of “show, don’t tell” writing.
But what I liked the most about it is that even if the living dead are pigeonholed as the ‘antagonistic’ force, Maberry always points out that sometimes, the real monsters are humans. Sure, the protagonists need to survive by killing/avoiding being bitten by zombies, but the said creatures are akin to machineries just fueled by their hunger for flesh. They couldn’t think evil deliberately anymore. Humans can, especially those who see the situation as something they can use to their advantage.
Now, let’s try viewing the book with literary goggles on. There seems to be a lot of derivatives here, or not-so-original stuff. The abominable “Gameland” has an analogous premise with Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games. The “Z-games” held in Gameland include inhuman blood sports like the gladiatorial pit fights (where a kid—with nothing but a stick or a knife—gets thrown into a pit to fight with a zombie) or haunted house (where someone is forced to roam inside a dark, zombie-ridden building). All of these are for the sake of the bounty hunters’ entertainment. What gives it a heart-pinching touch is that some people volunteer to be included in the Z-games so they can acquire a little money to feed mouths at home. That’s quite expected with the setting and all but do zoom in a little bit, THG fans—you might see the “tesserae” factor in here.
Also, the whole ‘there’s another world at the other side of the fence’ vibe reminds me of Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom trilogy (it doesn’t really help that there’s living dead in those books too). The denial and fear the Mountainside people have are reminiscent of the Ancelstierrians’ approach towards the Old Kingdom.
Nothing is original nowadays, I know. It appears that Maberry is also aware of that fact, so he did his best with his unique execution of the derivative materials in order to make something original out of them. In this book the Gameland just became alive in fragments of stories told by some of the characters; the readers don’t get a firsthand account of the actual Z-games. It may be explored in Dust and Decay, the second book, but you have to admit it’s really powerful writing if you haven’t really witnessed something and you hate it already. This brings us to the characters and how Maberry wistfully molded them. Tom Imura’s philosophy, Benny’s contrasting naivety and strong-headedness, Nix’s optimism, Lilah’s tragedy that made her wild but stronger, and the bounty hunters’ cruelty and selfishness…all of these can strike a chord with the readers in one way or another. Of course there are some unbelievable moments, like Tom’s anime-ish action scenes or Benny acting more childish than a ten-year-old, but they’re too small that deducting a star because of them seems a tad criminal.
There’s a lot of touching moments here, especially those that deal with Tom’s specialization in the zombie killing field. The epilogue is one heck of a tear-jerking “closure” (those who’ve read it will understand what I mean), and I couldn’t help but cry a little. It seems like Maberry knows how a certain question will haunt the readers from the beginning. I’ve already considered it a plothole halfway through the book, but he surprises me when he answered it perfectly at the end.
This is, as they said, a zombie story not just with brains but also with a heart. Four stars for a gripping read.
NEW READ. I know there’s still a stack of “unreads” on my bedside table but forgive me, it’s been a while since I last had a zombie read. Haha! Can’t help but pick it. They say it’s like George Romero meets Catcher in the Rye.
