Review - Flesh & Bone by Jonathan Maberry

Reeling from the tragic events of Dust & Decay, Benny Imura and his friends plunge deep into the zombie-infested wastelands of the great Rot & Ruin. Benny, Nix, Lilah and Chong journey through a fierce wilderness that was once America, searching for the jet they saw in the skies months ago. If that jet exists then humanity itself must have survived…somewhere. Finding it is their best hope for having a future and a life worth living.

But the Ruin is far more dangerous than any of them can imagine. They are hunted by fierce animals escaped from zoos and circuses. They must raid zombie-infested towns for food and medical supplies. They discover the very real truth in the old saying: In the Rot & Ruin…everything wants to kill you.

And what is happening to the zombies? Swarms of them are coming from the east, devouring everything in their paths. These zoms are different. Faster, smarter, infinitely more dangerous. Has the zombie plague mutated, or is there something far more sinister behind this new invasion of the living dead?

In Flesh & Bone, Benny Imura, Nix Riley, Lou Chong and Lilah the Lost Girl are pitted against dangers greater than anything they've ever faced. To survive, each of them must rise to become the warriors Tom trained them to be.

This review was originally posted over on Bookish by Evie. I thought it was time I put it up here too!

Book three in the Benny Imura series definitely did not disappoint. Flesh & Bone by Jonathan Maberry was an interesting story to read. With the addition of the Night Church with Saint John and Mother Rose to the discovery made by Benny and Nix that could possibly change the world as they know it, there wasn’t a lot of down time.

Benny, Nix, Chong, and Lilah are on their own now. The heart wrenching end to book two leaves them broken and grieving. Each in their own way. Benny’s way seems to scare him a bit and worry the others. The tension between him and Nix is incredibly thick and the relationship is strained to the point of faltering. But they hold on in any way they can.

The Night Church was an interesting addition. Listening to them speak (er… reading their conversations) made me incredibly uncomfortable and it all seemed SO over the top to me at first. But I realized that that was probably the point of it all. They were a weird cult with even weirder followers. And they were dangerous. Dangerous because they were following people with an evil agenda completely blindly and were willing to do whatever it took to stay in the good graces of Saint John and Mother Rose.

Captain Ledger was a good character. Kind of a light in the darkness of the Ruin. They’d run in to so much trouble already they really needed something to restore their faith in the world. Even if it was just a tiny bit. And I ended up really liking Riot. She was young, but she was strong. Reminded me a lot of Lilah.Their circumstances and the things that they’d been through were on complete opposite ends of the spectrum, but through those experiences they kind of both reached the same point if that makes sense.

There were some really unnerving twists in this story that change everything that Benny and Co. thought they knew about zombies and the ruin. To combat those though, they finally find answers to some of the questions they’ve been asking for a long time. Things make a lot more sense and I can’t wait to see where the new information takes the story.

Obviously if you’ve read the first two books in the series, you HAVE to read this one. It’s the kind of story that doesn’t give you enough time to really settle down. Just when you think you can breathe easy something else happens that puts you right back on the edge of your seat. I can’t wait for book four!