When First Night struck 14 years ago, and the recently reanimated dead arose with an insatiable hunger for the living, the world fell. Not immediately, but soon. Quickly enough the country was turned into the vast Rot and Ruin, a sort of Wild West wilderness where anything goes and the zombies do roam. Survivors teamed up in fenced-off towns such as Mountainside, California, and got on with the business of forgetting as much as they could, and distrusting technology even when they could resurrect it.

Benny Imura is about to turn 15, and the rules make him responsible for finding a job or his rations will be cut. Benny’s crew is a small bunch of teenagers much like any you can think of in your own past, lazy and directionless, learning about life in their own sheltered way. The zombies are “out there,” occasionally wandering into a fence and requiring a quick final death. Benny’s starting to feel conflicted about Nix, a girl on whom he’s got a crush but, for the usual illogical reasons, he can’t confess it. Drifting unwillingly into the “family business,” he ends up apprenticed to his half-brother, Tom, a “closure specialist.” Tom isn’t as cool as Charlie Pink-Eye and The Hammer, two of Mountainside’s most notorious zombie hunters. Benny remembers Tom as a coward, who ran away on First Night instead of saving their parents. Benny’s been secretly ashamed of Tom for nearly his whole life. Now he’s about to learn that much of what he knows and believes—about almost everything—isn’t true. Not true at all.

Maberry’s novel, first in a series about Benny and his samurai sword-wielding brother, Tom, is so much more than a book about zombies. In fact the “zoms” are the catalyst for some good old social commentary. Whether it’s Benny’s mistrust and misunderstanding of his brother, or the town’s insular approach to the rest of their lives, or the reality of what happens in the wilderness, or the potential callousness—and evil—of humans toward their fellow humans, or the morality of a society built around killing (even if necessary), there is plenty here to grab onto. It’s a coming-of-age story as well, a kind of sad and painful one. Indeed, sadness permeates many aspects of the book. There are several emotional scenes which will not leave most readers untouched. Maberry (author of Patient Zero, The Dragon Factory, Ghost Road Blues, etc.) writes both cinematically and tightly focused with a faint echo of Stephen King (think The Stand) and isn’t afraid to confront sensitive subjects and feelings, while managing to avoid the pedantic. There’s plenty of action and obligatory gore but, strangely, the zombies are rendered with such sadness for the end of humanity that it’s hard to hate them. Like the best zombie-related work (and better than most) Rot & Ruin holds up a mirror and asks us who is better: the mindless but unintentionally lethal zombies or the humans who seem willing to leave their own humanity behind. Though layered with occasionally devastating hopelessness, there are plenty of strong rays of hopeful sunshine. There are more adventures to come for Benny and other characters you grow to love, and anyone who’s read this first installment will want to go along.