I recently finished reading “Rot and Ruin” and I have to tell everyone about it. This is my first zombie novel and now I want to read more. I can see why YA are eating these kinds of books up like their candy. Candy that might rot your teeth or brain but very entertaining. I like how the author starts of by telling a gritty apocalyptic story that evolves into how the main character becomes a real person and in the end the hero. I know a lot of books that just tell a story and the characters just help move it along.
When I started out to read this novel I was just wanting to see what all the craze was about. Well it hooked me from the beginning and then I had to finish it. This author wrote in a way I thought was easy to understand and would be easy to grasp the underlining hints of what was really going on.
I have read some other books in the past few months : “Jazz“, “White Noise”, “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and “Bel Canto“. All of these authors have received awards for their works. I can see why they have too. Their writing is poetic and has a style all their own. They have helped me hone my own craft and how I should write a sentence in my novels. Reading “Rot and Ruin” benefitted me by seeing how the author took a character and slowly had him evolve into an end result where the reader wants to jump up from their seat and yell, “Yes!”. Some entertaining books are rewarding to new writers. I can learn why an author has so many people reading his novels. The voice an author uses sets the tone of how the rest of the book will be and sometimes like in “Jazz”, you can be surprised who the narrator is.
Terry Brooks and Brandon Mull have also been good authors to read. They know how to tell a story with humor and passion. I know there are probably many more authors out there that have been beneficial for my writing but I don’t want to make a long list of names. Reading and writing is something that goes hand in hand. I couldn’t do one without the other.
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