"Rot and Ruin" by Jonathan Maberry

458 pages

It's been fifteen years since First Night, when the dead began to reanimate and zombies took over the world. Benny Imura was a baby then, and now he's a teenager living with his older brother in Mountainside, an isolated town of about 8,000. The citizens call the zombie-infested world outside their fences "the Rot and Ruin." There are other towns out there, but only traders and "bounty hunters" (aka zombie killers) brave the wilderness in between. Benny and his brother, Tom, don't get along, partly because Benny still blames him leaving their mother behind after their father turned into a zombie on First Night. Benny has to get a job soon because everyone must start working at age fifteen or their rations are cut in half. He can't find any job he's good at, so at the last minute he ends up training with Tom to be a bounty hunter. Benny thinks his brother just runs around slashing the walking dead with his sword, but when they venture out into the Rot and Ruin, Benny discovers that it's much different than he thought. He begins to learn who his brother really is--and that there is an evil even worse than zombies lurking beyond his town's walls.

I've read lots of zombie books, and this one is different from most in that it takes place long after the living dead have taken over (most of the ones I've read describe the initial outbreak of zombies). I liked seeing the perspective of someone who has grown up in a world where zombies are the norm. The first half of the story seemed slow to me, but the second half picked up the pace and I really got into it. The story has a whole struck me as a social commentary about what makes us human and what a "monster" really is, but there is still plenty of action (at least at the end) to keep fans of typical zombie lit happy. The ending was somewhat predictable and was too drawn out for me. I hate that "instead of just killing you I'm going to tell you all the reasons why I am evil first" thing that the bad guys do in some movies and books, and there's some of that here. However, there is one part of the ending that took me by surprise and made me happy. I think the author does a good job of wrapping things up while leaving plenty of room for the next book in the series, which I look forward to.