Audiobook Review – Dust and Decay (Benny Imura, Book 2) by Jonathan Maberry (4/5 stars)

Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Post-Apocalyptic/Adventure
Length: 12 hours and 9 minutes
Publisher: Recorded Books
Release Date: August 5, 2011
ASIN: B005JDRN7Q
Stand Alone or Series: 2nd book in the Benny Imura series
Source: Audiobook from Audible.com
Rating: 4/5 stars

This is the second book in the Benny Imura series. Honestly I didn’t like this book nearly as much as the first. There are two more books in this series “Flesh and Bone” and “Fire and Ash”.

I listened to this on audiobook and the audiobook was really well done. It has the same narrator as the first book and I really enjoyed listening to it. The narrator does an excellent job with character voices and an excellent job conveying emotion.

Everyone is recovering from the events with Charlie Pink-Eye in the first book. Benny, Nix, and Tom are ready to leave Mountainside and track down the plane they saw in the first book. However Mountainside doesn’t want to Tom to leave, they are worried about other evil bounty hunters moving in to take his place. One bounty hunter, named White Bear, is causing a lot of trouble. Now there is a bounty on Tom’s head and it seems like Gameland is more prosperous than ever.

This was still a good book but I didn’t like it nearly as much as the first one. I was disappointed that this book was about similar issues as the first book. I was all excited to read about Benny, Tom, Lila, and Nix’s journey across the Rot and Ruin, instead what I got was more of the same as the last book.

Pretty much as soon as the group leaves Mountainside things start going wrong. We end up reading about territory wars with “evil” bounty hunters and trouble with Gameland. I find the whole Gameland idea to be a bit silly and was disappointed that so much of this book focused on that. I was hoping to read more about the Rot and Ruin as a whole, and gain better understanding of this world and why the zombies happened.

Benny has definitely grown as a character since the first book. Nix is harboring a lot of rage for what happened to her mother in the last book, we watch as she struggles through this anger.

Lila is in the story a lot, which is awesome. She too is struggling with issues of fitting in. She is so used to surviving alone, that it is tough to watch her as she struggles to become part of society.

We meet a lot of awesome new “good” bounty hunters. It was super fun to meet some of the bounty hunters we’ve heard so much about from the Zombie cards. We also meet a lot of completely evil baddies. There was a lot more action in this book as welll we get to see Tom kick some serious butt. As I mentioned above we also get very up and personal with Gameland.

This book is still well written and I love that there is a lot of philosophical introspection as well as zombie fights. There is brief mention about zombies starting to Swarm and some curious stuff going on where zombies are acting different than they have in the past. I just wish we had got to hear more about that and less about Gameland.

Overall a decent continuation of this series. These books are well written and I love that there is time spent on philisophy, as well as fighting zombies. I was disappointed that this book was more about Gameland and evil bounty hunters. I was hoping to read about Nix, Benny, and Tom journeying across the Rot and Ruin. We do get to meet a lot of new bounty hunters that are awesome and there are some spectacular fight scenes in here. Recommended to those who enjoy post-apocalyptic zombie novels.

This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– 100 Books in a Year Reading Challenge
– 150+ Reading Challenge
– Audio Book Challenge
– TBR Pile Reading Challenge