Rot & Ruin by Jonathan Maberry

This was like a YA version of The Walking Dead and I thought it was brilliantly done. The way the community was portrayed, the rules they had to follow for safety, and the economy that revolved around trading and bounty hunting was a really creative and interesting take on the zombie dystopian formula. Especially since, like a lot of zombie horror media, we find out that humans can be the worst monsters.

Brothers Benny and Tom really stole the show, and I liked Benny's character arc as he went from unlikable and petty boy to a teenager who was starting to become more like the adult he would one day be. His grown brother, Tom, was probably my favorite character, and like a lot of the female characters, I kind of had a bit of a crush on him.

The female characters on this book were less interesting and less fleshed out. They weren't bad, exactly, but none of them were particularly interesting and they tended to either fawn over the male characters or end up as collateral. Even The Lost Girl, the female bounty hunter, often ends up a casualty to the male gaze.

That said, this was entertaining from start to finish and I was excited to see how it would go down. Jonathan Maberry is a very talented story teller and I'm excited to read further into this series.

4 to 4.5 out of 5 stars