The Friday 56, #14: Rot & Ruin

The Friday 56 is a weekly blog meme hosted by Freda’s Voice. Join in every Friday, the rules are simple.

Rules:

*Grab a book, any book.

*Turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader.

*Find any sentence (or a few, just don’t spoil it) that grab you.

*Post it.

*Add your (url) post here in Linky. Add the post url, not your blog url. It’s that simple.

“Tell me something, Benny,” said Tom. “What would you have done if one of your friends…had come to Aunt Cathy’s funeral and took a leak in her coffin?”

Benny was so startled by the question that his answer was unguarded. “I’d have jacked them up. I mean, jacked them up…What kind of question is that, though?”

“Indulge me. Why would you have freaked out on your friends?”

“Because they dissed Aunt Cathy, why do you think?”

“But she’s dead.”

In celebration of Friday the 13th (does one celebrate Friday the 13th?) I decided to spotlight one of my favorite zombie series, the Benny Imura series by Jonathan Maberry. Here I feature the first book, Rot & Ruin, in the four-book series. Here Tom tries to explain to his little brother why it isn’t okay to desecrate the dead, zombie or not.

From Goodreads:

“In the zombie-infested, post-apocalyptic America where Benny Imura lives, every teenager must find a job by the time they turn fifteen or get their rations cut in half. Benny doesn’t want to apprentice as a zombie hunter with his boring older brother Tom, but he has no choice. He expects a tedious job whacking zoms for cash, but what he gets is a vocation that will teach him what it means to be human.”

Fire & Ash by Jonathan Maberry

Title: Fire & Ash
Author: Jonathan Maberry
Series: Benny Imura, #4

In the fourth and final installment of Jonathan Maberry’s zombie apocalypse series, Benny Imura and his friends face a final battle against Saint John and the Night Church. Angry and confused over the lack of aide coming from those in charge at Sanctuary and desperate to save their friend Chong, Benny and company must venture into the unknown in search of the lost scientist Monica McReady who may have discovered a cure for the zombie plague. Meanwhile the reapers are devising a deadly plan to eradicate the last of humanity. Benny is pushed to his limits and discovers just how far he’s willing to go to stop Saint John and his army.

“I will paint you with her blood.”

I credit Jonathan Maberry’s Rot & Ruin for nurturing my like for zombies and transforming it into a full blown love-affair. The book was not centered around the fear of the dead rising, but around those who survived the cataclysmal event and despite the terrors of the outside world wanted to live. It was a book about growing up and discovering that real evil wasn’t in the reanimation of dead corpses, but in those who treated life and death like a game, who forgot that these walking cadavers were once someone’s loved-ones, and who devalued the life of the living.

And so it seems only fitting that the last confrontation for Benny not be with a horde of zombies, but with the most merciless of all enemies who doesn’t fight for entertainment or notoriety, but for the express purpose of destroying the human race. Saint John stands in direct contrast to Benny and his friends, who push forward with the hope of ending the plague and having a future. I found the leader of the Night Church to be a terrifying antagonist not because of his goal but because of the pleasure his own ruthless rampages produced.

The final change in Benny’s character comes in Fire & Ash and I can’t help but mourn the loss of his innocence. There are times when you see that impulsive, petulant child express itself and I felt something a little like hope. It was hope that if they could find a cure that perhaps Benny could still go back to being that naive kid he was in Rot & Ruin. But the real lesson of Fire & Ash is one of sacrifice, of burning that bridge between childhood and adulthood not because you want to but because you have to in order to defeat an enemy as inhumane as it is relentless.

This series never failed to grab hold of me. My expectations for a satisfactory zombie book are directly linked to these books. I enjoyed every one and am still in shambles over the departure of a certain character. And before I end this review I must give kudos to Jonathan Maberry for The Walking Dead reference. You made me smile.

Rating: 4/5

★★★★