Rot & Ruin

By: Jonathan Maberry

Narrated by: Brian Hutchison

Length: 13 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's summary

Multiple Bram Stoker Award-winning author Jonathan Maberry’s Rot & Ruin is his debut work for young readers. Fifteen-year-old Benny Imura lives in a world infested with zombies where, when a kid turns 15, he must get a job to continue receiving food rations. Benny has no interest in the family business of zombie killing, but figures he doesn’t have much of a choice. He’s tried out a bunch of other jobs, and hasn’t found anything he likes. But as Benny starts training with his brother, he learns things about being human that he never expected.

©2010 Jonathan Maberry (P)2010 Recorded Books, LLC

Starts slow but gets good.

Starts out slow, but by the end it's a 4/5. The slow start dropped my rating to a 3. I hope the next book in the series keeps running where this one left off instead of having to start at an uphill crawl.

Amazing Story!

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Absolutely! This is not a horror story, but rather is a great coming of age story. It is in the YA genre, but the writing and story are ageless. My 10 year old son listened to this with me and was hooked. It had a few bad words in it, but nothing they probably wouldn't hear on the ball field. We also listened to the second book in the series, Dust and Decay, and found it to be even more enjoyable than Rot and Ruin! We can not wait for book 3 to come out in September!

Rot and Ruin Series

Instead of writing a review for each book I will write one for the whole series
Rot and Ruin, Dust and Decay, Ash and Fire, Flesh and Bone are all excellent. Great storylines and characters-Old and New.
John brought new characters to life and brought some of our favorites from other Series and gave us an awesome Series. A Series for Teens and adults alike.

Fun read. Grab's ya and won't let go

Nice twist from the old zombie stories. It's got a lot less blood and gut's and nothing spash's in your face.
Kind of a moral feel and you wonder who are the real monster's us or the zombie's.

Great Zombie Story for Teens and Adults

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I listened to it myself and then listened to it again with my kids.

What did you like best about this story?

Great characters and setting after the end of the world. The narration was excellent.

Not what I thought it was going to be thank God!

So glad that other reviewers told me to just stick out the first hour or two till he goes with his brother into the rot in ruin. It’s a kind of coming to age story in the zombie apocalypse. I noticed right away when they first go into the rot and ruin that this was not like my typical zombie apocalypses story and I was worried that this wouldn’t be for me. Then the story telling began and everything I thought went out the window and I was all in with these characters. Great narration also.

Good zombie story

wasn't sure at beginning, but great story line throughout the book. good action, and sad stories.

An amazing book!

I am ready to start the second book and loved the first. one of the few books I have ever loved and finished myself in my life!

Meh..

Didn’t expect this book to be PG-13 when I purchased it. J.M. could’ve done better. I think I’m going to skip the rest of this series. To slow and child like. Maybe for the teen reader, but not for me. I like my zombie apocalypse books to be a little grittier and hardcore. I thought this would be on the same level as the Dead of Night series and the Joe Ledger series.. wouldn’t recommend if you’re looking for a harder zombie novel to engulf you like other Johnathan Mayberry books would.

Kinda feel like a zombie after listening

I might be too much of a "Zombie snob" to truly enjoy this one. I've read over a dozen Zombie books including a few others written by Maberry, and this one was just ok.
it starts off slow, but picked up just enough to keep my attention. But I also could've stopped at any point and felt like I didn't miss anything.
There were some definite "eye roll" parts with the dialog and some of the situations. The main antagonist had such questionable motives that he was more of an incompetent comic book villain than a true ruthless product of the apocalypse. Don't even get me started on how obnoxious Benny was. There is trying to add flaws to your characters to give them depth, and there's needlessly making your protagonist annoying, thereby annoying your listener.
I finished the story and was so glad to be done with it.