Rot and Ruin was so much more enjoyable than I thought it would be, and it left such a tantalizing hook at the end, I naturally picked up its sequel, Dust and Decay, soon after I finished reading it. Since it’s nearly impossible to review Dust and Decay without talking about Rot and Ruin, I’m giving you the obligatory warning: There are spoilers for Rot and Ruin ahead.

At the end of Rot and Ruin, Benny and Tom and the rest of the crew have defeated Charlie Pink-Eye, rescued Nix, and made it back home safely. But they spotted something incredible while out in the Rot and Ruin: a flying jet headed somewhere unknown. In the six months since they saw it, Benny, Nix, Lilah, and Chong have been training hard with Tom, learning how to fight zoms and survive in the Rot and Ruin. Once Tom deems them ready, they intend to find the jet, and hopefully the society that comes with it.

I was excited for this sequel because I’m always interested in seeing how a society handles a cataclysm – and how different societies clash during the aftermath. The question haunting Benny’s mind (and the minds of his friends) is “Is there anyone else out there?” Naturally, I have this question too.

Unfortunately, while Benny and his crew set out to find the jet, the story is not about that journey. Instead, at almost the very moment they step into the Rot and Ruin, Chong is kidnapped by a group of bad guys who plan to take him to Gameland. What’s more, they think they spot Charlie Pink-Eye in the midst of a group of zombies. Is Charlie Pink-Eye really dead? Is he a zom? Will they have to kill him all over again?

I’m sad to say that I was pretty let down by Dust and Decay because its plot is so similar to Rot and Ruin: rescue a friend from Gameland, defeat Charlie Pink-Eye, make it back home safely. The two books even end the same, with the survivors vowing to finally find that jet.

Maberry’s writing is as good as ever, with plenty of wisecracking and a nice bit of character development with Nix, who was mostly overshadowed in the first book. But Dust and Decay is too much of a re-hash of the first book to be satisfying. I felt a little betrayed by it, since I was so looking forward to seeing where the hunt for the jet would take Benny – and as it turns out, it takes him nowhere.

This is not to say that Dust and Decay isn’t worth reading. If you enjoyed the first, give it a shot: it’s fast reading despite its length, and the facets of Nix, Lilah, and Chong that Maberry reveals here are solid and interesting. I feel like I know all three of them so much better, and they moved from being ancillary characters that simply back up Benny to being characters I really care about. It’s too bad about the carbon copy plot.

Review copy received from the publisher. Dust and Decay is available now.

Sometime in the future, our earth has been made unlivable. A group of colonists set out on a course for New Earth, hoping to keep the human race alive. They journey in two ships: the New Horizon, which holds the religious colonists, and the Empyrean, which holds the non-religious colonists. (Full disclosure: I think the explanation for separating the people into these two groups is stupid and not believable. But it’s necessary for the plot. And the rest is so well done. I forgive the author.)

On the Empyrean we find teenagers Waverly and Kiernan, our two protagonists. Waverly is the first person born on the ship, and she’s been dating Kiernan, the son of the commander, for some time. The journey is going to take awhile, so it’s necessary for the people on the ship to reproduce. This means the youth on board are encouraged to marry early and reproduce often. Waverly and Kiernan become engaged near the beginning of the book, and all seems well.

Then the Empyrean meets up with the New Horizon, with which they have not had contact for a long time. Without warning, the New Horizon attacks the Empyrean, kidnapping all of the young girls – including Waverly – and taking them to the New Horizon. The Empyrean is left decimated, intact but not really able to function. Those left on board, including Kiernan and all of the other boys and adults, are pretty much left to die.

Why would the crew of the New Horizon do this? Glow explores this question in chapters that alternate between Waverly and Kiernan’s points of view. From the beginning, it’s obvious to Waverly and the other girls that the people on the New Horizon are bad – the girls have been kidnapped, their parents are dead, their brothers probably dead too. But things on the New Horizon (and by extension the Empyrean) are not what they seem, and it’s a testament to Ryan’s skill as a writer that she makes the reader question everything multiple times right along with Waverly. (Waverly, by the way, is an awesome character who shows tremendous growth throughout the novel. She’s a thinking woman’s badass.)

Meanwhile on the Empyrean, Kiernan, as the commander’s son and natural next in line, struggles to maintain control of the ship and plan a rescue amid technical malfunctions and the threat of mutiny from the other boys.

This book definitely needs open-minded, careful readers, those who aren’t quick to feel angry over what others may see as the author’s attempt to demonize believers or non-believers (and both sides can be argued). Religion is such a touchy topic, one that forms the core of so many people’s identities, and it can be tough to handle well. Ryan has certainly succeeded with Glow. She presents an even-handed account of people on both sides of the faith coin. The believers and the non-believers are equally sinister (despite what the initial attack may convey), and it kind of blows my mind that some reviewers are so caught up in whining that their religion is being demonized that they miss the fact that the non-believers are baddies too – and not a lesser kind of bad.

Ultimately, though, Glow is not a story about God’s existence – it’s a story about how people use the belief or lack of belief in God in order to wield power. It’s about how people can seize upon an incredibly powerful idea and use it as a tool to achieve their own goals. It’s a story about manipulation and control and human nature, all tied up with a fantastic science fiction story where nothing is what it seems.

Part of what makes Glow so effective is that Ryan thwarts reader’s expectations at every turn, primarily where characters’ actions and motivations are concerned. Just when I thought I had nailed down who was good and who was bad, who was our protagonist and who our antagonist, Ryan threw me for a loop and I had to completely reassess everything. And then she did it again. I think her point is that there isn’t really a “good” or “bad” side – it’s not that easy. I love when books can flip things multiple times and make it authentic, just part of the natural growth of the characters and development of the plot.

And of course, there’s a great story here – action, love, betrayal, the fate of the new world at stake. This type of science fiction is supposedly the next big thing in YA literature (the space travel kind of science fiction, not the dystopia kind of science fiction, which peaked awhile ago). I’m excited about that. I’ve always been a fan of the type of science fiction that involves exploring completely new worlds. There’s so much room for creativity and uniqueness there, and I could see a lot of great stuff coming out soon – provided the authors exploit that possibility for creativity and don’t forget that good stories need good characters. Otherwise, we’ll just be seeing a bunch of carbon copies with flat characters and predictable plots.

Glow is the first in a series, but it’s so well done that I didn’t mind. There’s at least a climax and a resolution, which so many first entries lack. And Ryan writes so well that I look forward to seeing what else she does.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Glow will hit shelves September 13.

Zombies are people, too. Or at least, they were.

That’s the lesson Benny Imura learns the first time he goes out zombie hunting with his older brother Tom. Tom’s a zombie bounty hunter (he prefers to call himself a “closure specialist”) and has agreed to take Benny on as an apprentice when Benny’s other attempts at holding down a job fail. Benny’s just turned fifteen, and in the post-apocalyptic world he inhabits, where zombies outnumber humans, all fifteen year olds must work a part-time job or have their rations cut in half.

Tom’s a different sort of zombie hunter who eschews the violent tendencies of the other big-name hunters and takes his job seriously. What exactly it is that Tom does when he goes hunting will surprise you, so I won’t share it here – you’ll have to read the book to find out. It’s one of the many surprisingly moving moments in this terrific book that is equal parts humor and heart.

Of course, hunting zombies (zoms for short) isn’t all Rot and Ruin is about. While the zoms provide plenty of action, the real conflict is with other living, non-rotting humans. Benny practically hero-worships the big-name zombie hunters – Charlie Matthias and the Motor City Hammer, for example – and looks down on his older brother, who he sees as weak and cowardly. Part of that feeling stems from the fact that when the zombie apocalypse occurred, Tom swooped up Benny (who was a toddler at the time) and ran away, leaving his mother to be turned by his already zombified father.

So things are tense between the brothers. Then Benny’s friend (and potential girlfriend) Nix Riley is abducted by Charlie and the Hammer, and Benny and Tom venture out into the great Rot and Ruin to rescue her from a pretty awful fate. They must battle zombies, contend with the murderous bounty hunters, and hopefully find the mysterious Lost Girl, who may be the key to rescuing Nix.

The first sections of Rot and Ruin are pretty hilarious. They chronicle Benny’s attempts – with his friend Chong – to land a part-time job. This might have been tedious reading in a world not overrun by zombies, but the zombie apocalypse has created a plethora of new jobs that are a riot to read about. For example: Benny interviews to assist an artist who specializes in erosion portraits – zombified images of family members that people pay for. Benny and Chong also try their hand at being pit throwers (unloading dead zombies from the backs of trucks and throwing them into the fire), carpet coat salesmen (literally, selling coats made out of carpets so zombies can’t bite you), and locksmith apprentices (to keep the zombies out of your home in case they break through the fence).

While the first portion of the book is definitely the funniest, Benny’s narrative voice keeps the funny going in bits and pieces throughout, despite the serious turn the story takes when Nix is abducted. I can count on one hand the books I’ve read that are this successful at combining laugh out loud humor with true poignancy (The True Meaning of Smekday is another one that does it). Rot and Ruin is so successful, in fact, that my eyes welled up at the end. (Yours will too, trust me.)

Maberry is an old hat at zombies in the adult fiction market, and it shows here. He’s created a fantastically detailed and believable world. In Rot and Ruin, the zombie apocalypse is more than just a punchline or a device to creep you out, and that’s something I really appreciated.

The main criticism I have of Rot and Ruin is with Tom: he’s just too perfect. Sure, Benny resents him, but we know from the get-go that his resentment is misplaced. Tom not only has a heart of gold, he’s a badass fighter, a father-figure stand-in, and exemplifies the qualities of compassion and mercy. He’s the ultimate boy scout. He’s someone to look up to, to be sure, but he’s also someone who’s a little annoying because of it.

Of course this is a minor quibble in an overall fantastic book. There’s a sequel out August 30, but don’t take that to mean Rot and Ruin isn’t a complete book – it is, thank goodness. It just means that Maberry has more stories to tell about Benny and his world, for which I am very grateful.

I have what may be an unhealthy obsession with time travel. When I was a teen, I had bookmarked several sites that speculated on the possibility of time travel, and whether we’d eventually be able to travel forward and backward in time, or maybe just forward OR backward. I spent a long time wondering if I would rather solve the mystery of Stonehenge or see what America would be like in the year 2500.

So you can see why this book would appeal. In Ruby Red, the translation into English of the German novel by Kerstin Gier, we meet Gwyneth Shepherd, who is nothing special. It’s her cousin Charlotte who is the special one – she’s inherited the family gene that allows her to travel backward in time. Charlotte is at the age where the ability is supposed to manifest itself, and she’s got the trademark dizzy spells that indicate imminent travel.

But, surprisingly, it’s Gwen who travels one day. While Charlotte has been trained her whole life on how to survive in the past, Gwen has received no training. Without warning, she’s thrust into the world of time travel, and she has to learn how to behave in the past without giving herself away. She also becomes embroiled in the family machinations, which involve a secret order of time travelers and a strange machine called the chronograph that helps control the time traveling and needs the blood of the travelers to work. And there’s a boy time-traveler from another family, Gideon, who was probably in love with Charlotte and resents the fact that Gwen has replaced her. Unluckily for Gwen, she’s tasked with traveling back in time with Gideon and getting the blood of all the past time travelers (there aren’t many) to add to the machine, for reasons that are deliberately kept secret.

The biggest problem with Ruby Red is that it’s all exposition. We wait a long time for Gwen to finally tell her family that she’s traveled, and even when she has, the pace doesn’t really pick up. There’s a somewhat exciting battle near the end of the book that serves as its climax, but it doesn’t answer any questions. In fact, no questions are answered throughout the entire novel, and it makes for a frustrating read, not a satisfying one.

Furthermore, the book is framed by two confusing chapters about Lucy and Paul, two time-travelers from Gwen’s time who ran away – disappearing into the past – several years ago, and these chapters made no sense to me with the information I was provided. Perhaps they would make sense on a re-read after I’ve had a chance to read the book’s sequels, but I doubt I’ll put forth the effort.

The last thing I’ll complain about is somewhat small, but important. There’s a lot of sexism in the book. I should note that it’s not something the author supports. In fact, it’s used to show that certain characters are the bad guys. This is a problem. It’s like the author had this conversation with herself: “OK, here’s where I introduce the bad guy. How can I show that he’s bad? Oh, I know, I can have him make disparaging remarks about women!” It’s too easy, and it’s too pervasive. After awhile it just gets irritating to read about.

I think Ruby Red had a lot of potential that went unfulfilled. A time travel gene is such a neat concept (the Time Traveler’s Wife made mega money off of it), and Gwen has a unique narrative voice. It’s possible that some of the confusion and other faults are due to the translation. Ultimately, though, this isn’t a book I can really recommend. There’s not enough actual time travel, no resolution, and too much deliberate obfuscation. It’s not a bad read, it’s just not a particularly good one. There are plenty of other good books out there that are more worth your time.