Book Review: The Rot and The Ruin by Johnathan Mabarry

Let me just say this up front, before I say anything else at all about this book, I have never read another Zombie book, I have never seen a Zombie movie, and I have never seen a Zombie tv show. This is, in fact, my first rodeo. So take that into consideration as you read the review.

Anyway, The Rot and The Ruin is a book about a boy called Benny who lives in a town called Mountainside which is a town that was set up after First Night(which is when the dead rose and started attacking people. Benny's brother, Tom, is the only member of his family still living and is a Bounty Hunter who's job is to hunt down reanimated family members for his clients. Benny does not like his brother because he feels that he(Tom that is not Benny) is a coward because years ago(on first night) he ran(with Benny) out of his house as their mother was being attacked by their father. All that Benny can remember about that night is his mother wearing a white dress with red sleeves screaming at them while their father dragged her back into the house. Benny instead looks up to a different bounty hunter called Charlie Pink-Eye. Eventually Benny has to get a job with Tom and discovers many things about the world.

This book is driven, primarily, by its plot and that is not necessarily a problem. Once this book gets its hooks into you it is(and I know that this sounds like a cliche) hard to put down.

But......Ah the characters and the writing. Benny, the main character, is not particularly likable and his romance feels a little forced(though his romantic interest is awesome) and his relationship with his brother is fairly ridiculous. Benny comes over as more than a little bit of an idiot. This brings me to the writing.

Now, this may(and probably will) sound very strange but....Mr Mabarry writes too much like me. The book felt like something I or some of my writing friends might write. And I believe that they are good writers but...if you are a published adult writer who is making(presumably) good money you should be able to write better than a 15 or 16 year old. I am not a fan of really dense writing(I view it as being normally self indulgent) but this is written very un-dense without being sparse. This reads like my book(which will return to Amazon very soon, by the way)and that is not really a good thing. It has a good and intriguing plot but it is really...for lack of a better word...surface level.

There are also serious problems with the characters and their relationships. For example the main romance happens after one character has said definitively that he does not want a relationship with the other character. The final confrontation with the villain happens like four times. They threaten him, he has a dramatic monologue about his beliefs and then....they do it again! And, I believe once more after that. When they finally kill him it is in the least satisfying way possible. I wanted that [Insert insulting name of choice] to die really bad throughout the whole book. And when he finally did it there was nothing. I mean, [slight spoiler warning] he gets hit in the head with a pipe. I wanted him to go down and I wanted it to be violent. Chop his head off or shoot him or something, but make it dramatic for God's Sake.

There are also problems with the continuity of the book. For example: One character is always telling the main character not to swear but then, later in the book, he begins to swear. Another character has a family member killed in a very brutal way and they are upset for like a page and a half. A different character would have died like three times but was always essentially unhurt.

The book is also very predictable, I saw X coming and thought "Oh I must be wrong, he won't do X" And then....HE FREAKING DID X. And then on top of that he did Y, which was just as obvious.

The ending was extraordinarily unsatisfying, starting with the climax and continuing on to the end. I want, not only more closure, but more...vindication. I wanted there to be a point, and there really wasn't. The book as a whole is kind of down on human nature as a whole.

One very good thing about the book is that he made the villains humans instead of Zombies. He made the point that you can't really blame Zombies for what they do. They can't control their actions. But humans can. I know that I'm right about this because the author states it. He is not a huge fan of subtlety

It was a fun read and I will read the sequel. But, I don't know, it could have been way, way better. It fit in with the common stereotype of "teen lit" being surface and unchallenging.