All Your Ruins is a kaiju post-apocalyptic horror novel written and illustrated by Alex Gayhart.
It has been some time since the world ended. An unprecedented cataclysm triggered the rise of monstrous creatures big and small. And with it, all of modern civilization was destroyed. As the monsters rule over the world, pockets of humanity are left to struggle to survive their oncoming extinction.
...And that's just the backstory.
This story focuses on three separate plot lines, each dealing with people trying to make something of what little time they may have left before their lives are snuffed out by the unforgiving new world.
James, a survivor of humanity's fall who seeks to kill Zarius, one of the most powerful kaiju around, with only his wits and the unique ability to endure the harsh elements.
Allison, a young adult who travels with her little sister Jenny so that they may find Haven, a supposed sanctuary in a land where there can be no safety.
And Ronald Hicks, a nobody before everything went to Hell, who only now stands a chance of becoming a somebody.
Make no mistake, All Your Ruins might be one of the darkest kaiju novella there is, and ever will be. Hence its status as an obscure cult classic amongst fans of the genre.
Tropes:
- Accidental Murder: Zarius killed a lot of humans both intentionally and unintentionally. Among them was James' fiance Hannah.
- After James' EGS gets tipped over while fighting Zarius, its continuing gunfire ends up killing Allison.
- After the End: The story takes place well after the kaiju and their mutagenic blood have all but completely destroyed humanity and the world as they knew it.
- Alien Blood: The kaiju's black blood is known as the Kaiju Blight for how it can practically change everything it touches. It mutates all wildlife into monstrous horrors, but with mammals (like us), it cannot do that, and it is described as just giving up as it causes them to die horribly upon contact.
- Animalistic Abomination: The kaiju and especially the animals mutated by their blood look like malformed versions of regular animals, particularly the birds and the insects.
- Apocalypse How: A Class-2 example. The kaiju rising from the Earth was bad enough, but then their blood had an ill effect on people, and reduced the whole population in chunks as the mutated monsters killed everything.
- Beast of the Apocalypse: Zarius is certainly made out to be one, but in truth, the City Breakers as a whole were this in spades.
- Behemoth Battle: Seeing how this is a world dominated by kaiju, it was inevitable. Near the end, Zarius and the Goblin square off.
- Big Bad: On the kaiju side, Zarius. On the human side, Ronald Hicks.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: Arthropods got mutated by the Blight, including a massive beetle-looking thing, dog-sized fly monsters, and the recurring swarm of bizarre swarming bugs that menace everyone.
- Big Damn Heroes: Bull saves Allison from an insect during their raid on Haven. James later does this for the rest of the survivors while fighting Zarius in the EGS, though he accidentally kills Allison in the process.
- Bittersweet Ending: At first, it seems like a straight Downer Ending, with almost the entire cast dead and Jenna mutated into something part kaiju, part plant. However, the truth is that while many are dead and Haven is in ruins, our protagonists got what they wanted. James dies happy knowing that he vanquished Zarius in spectacular fashion, and Allison ultimately managed to protect her sister, who has now found a peaceful and pain-free existence as something else. There is also the implication that Ronald was taken over by the Blight and replaced with something much nicer.
- Black-and-Grey Morality: With the exception of the very much innocent Allison and Jenna, there's little luck finding any traditional good guy in the Ruin. James wants to kill a kaiju, but he's too consumed by vengeance to even consider using his gifts for the betterment of anyone else. Meanwhile, Haven is a Wretched Hive run by corrupt madmen (especially after Ronald takes over), but they're just trying to survive, and some aren't nearly as malicious as Ronald or Stidham. And then you have the kaiju that menace them all, which are simply predators maddened by the sheer wrongness of their own biology.
- Body Horror: There is something very wrong with every monster seen. For starters, they are constantly having their cells rip apart and come back again, and many look like they were made with bits and pieces of other creatures. A particularly extreme example is when Zarius builds up an obscene amount of flesh and tissue just to burn it all away with his Breath Attack. And that's not even getting into what the Blight does to regular humans...
- Break Out the Museum Piece: James finds an EGS tank, one of the few bits of tech left from the old world, and uses it to great effect, including getting through the land without being killed and even fighting Zarius on semi-even ground.
- Chekhov's Gun: The still-living amalgamation of human corpses mutated by the Kaiju Blight that Allison finds in the church. Jenna encounters a similarly affected person at the very end, but it's far more benevolent.
- Civilization Destroyer: The kaiju in spades.
- Cockroaches Will Rule the Earth: Not necessarily roaches (though it wouldn't be surprising if they flourished now), but many bugs are roaming around as some of the top predators, particularly the swarming insects.
- Cool Big Sis: It doesn't get much cooler than going through Hell just to get your little sister a surviving chance in the apocalypse.
- The Corruption: The Kaiju Blight functions like this for anything that isn't a mammal. They violently self-destruct when they touch the blood. Anything else, meanwhile, gets turned into an Animalistic Abomination.
- Crapsack World: Everything after the Ruin makes for a horrible place to be. The environment is either filled with building-sized destroyers or ravenous oversized mutant animals. On the humans' side, the safest place for anyone is ruled by violence-crazed madmen.
- Creepy Cathedral: One of Allison and Jenna's stops is an abandoned church that once held a communion of crazies who sought salvation through the Kaiju Blight. They ended up turning into an immobile still-living Body of Bodies. Thankfully, that's the only creepy part about the otherwise safe building.
- Death Seeker: James. His goal is to kill Zarius, and more than likely die in the effort.
- Death World: Simply put, your days are numbered in a world of vicious predators and towering behemoths.
- Deconstruction: Of the kaiju genre. It asks the question "what if the giant monsters WON?" for starters, and shows that if they did, there would not be much of a world left. Also, the fact that huge beasts cannot possibly exist due to square-cube law is invoked, with the text frequently describing how the beasts defy all of reality, and are all the more terrifying for it. There is nothing majestic or awesome about these monsters for the most part. They are all vicious and malformed and, quite implicitly, in tremendous pain from just existing.
- Depopulation Bomb: The kaiju and their Blight didn't kill all of humanity, but it has come very close to doing so.
- Devoured by the Horde: The fate of almost everyone who meets their end at the jaws of the giant insect colony.
- Disaster Dominoes: The most generous way to describe the fall of Haven. First they find an egg and let it hatch into a vicious infant kaiju. Then that infant gets Zarius' attention. Then the Goblin shows up alongside it. Then the insects come from beneath the ground. By the end of it all, there's no Haven left.
- Disaster Scavengers: The scouts of Haven are regularly sent out to retrieve resources. As one might guess, lifespans are limited.
- Double-Meaning Title: "All Your Ruins" not only refers to the dilapidated state of the world, but also how the wills and sanity of every human is all but collapsed as well. This is given a fair bit of acknowledgement in the story proper.
- The Dragon: Stidham to Ron.
- Dug Too Deep: Implied to be what caused the rise of the kaiju after the Cygnette corporation unearthed one in the Australian Outback.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: It's saying something when the closest thing to a peaceful creature in the story is a giant spiky river snake that passes by a girl it scares shitless. All other beasts want your head.
- Fallout Shelter Fail: Haven ultimately cannot keep the monsters out, and the third act is basically dedicated to its complete and utter destruction at their hands.
- Feathered Fiend: The birds have been mutated into monsters. The most common ones look a lot like blood-red storks.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: After the Ruin came to be, Ronald went from an unemployed failure to one of the most influential and terrifying figures in Haven.
- Many of the kaiju count as well. They went from regular animals to titanic horrors with their exposure to the Blight. Zarius is hinted to have just started out as a harmless horned lizard.
- Giant Corpse World: The City Breakers that do die leave behind huge bones that tower like the buildings of old. James finds refuge in the skull of one for a bit.
- Giant Equals Invincible: The bigger the monster is, the less likely anything aside from another kaiju can touch it, unlike the smaller and more vulnerable creatures.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: Bound to happen in most apocalyptic stories like this, but it's there. The only beings here that kill with explicitly malicious intent are Ronald and his followers.
- The Immune: James isn't affected by the Kaiju Blight due to having received a vaccine for it earlier. This becomes a crucial plot-point.
- Kaiju: All of mankind's problems stem from them taking over the world. And they come in a surprising amount of shapes and sizes. However, the ones that can be truly called traditional kaiju are the City Breakers, or the Magnificent Seven as they were once called. Monsters like Zarius and Skyquake are among them.
- Karmic Death: In a poetic way, Zarius' death is this, as he graphically blows up the same way humans do when afflicted with the Kaiju Blight.
- Kill All Humans: The kaiju seem to explicitly go after people more than anything else. Then again, they attack anything that has a pulse.
- The Lost Lenore: Hannah, James' deceased fiance who got unintentionally killed by Zarius.
- May–December Romance: Allison, a 20-year old, falls for James, who's 35 and is still grieving over his loss. As one might guess, nothing becomes of it on his watch.
- More Teeth than the Osmond Family: The Goblin's jaws are filled with circular rows of teeth that are implied to go all the way into its stomach.
- Notzilla: Zarius, though he's more like Shin Godzilla than anything else.
- Non-Malicious Monster: No matter how much everyone tries to portray the kaiju and their kind as evil (it doesn't help Zarius looks so much like the Devil), the simple fact is that most of them are just oversized predators looking to survive.
- Power Glows: When Zarius charges up his Breath Weapon, his spikes glow a bright white.
- Reclaimed by Nature: Sort of. The animals of the world run rampant, but just about all of them have been turned into horrific monsters.
- Reptiles Are Abhorrent: It was mostly reptiles that made up the mutated kaiju, such as Zarius and the Goblin.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: After his offspring is killed in front of him, Zarius proceeds to blast what's left of Haven to oblivion with his breath attack.
- Ruins of the Modern Age: Everything from houses to churches to even bigger buildings scatter the land. Fittingly, everything related to the apocalypse is referred to as "the Ruin".
- Shout-Out: Naturally, Zarius is one to the King of the Monsters himself.
- The chemical James gets in order to kill Zarius, KO 1989 GVB, is named after both Godzilla vs. Biollante and the year the film came out.
- The giant insect colony look and act a lot like the Arachnids from Starship Troopers.
- Single Specimen Species: The City Breakers are thought to be one of a kind, but Zarius' offspring proves this to be false.
- Sucky School: The bedrock of Haven is an abandoned high school. It goes from the HQ of an oppressive regime to an out-right horror setting when the giant insects invade.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Due to most of the monsters being cold-blooded, they are far less active during the winter, this book's setting. Note, that doesn't mean they're not active at all.
- Haven was, and let's be fair here, destined to fail. If the constant power struggle didn't kill it first, the monsters outside of the walls, several of which are bigger than said walls, would instead.
- The Swarm: The insects, as they are only known, come in droves, actively seeking out new turf to conquer.
- Tragic Monster: When you boil it down, the monsters here are all horribly mutated aberrations that constantly hurt themselves just to move. At least, most of them are. Zarius is most certainly this, as he is explicitly stated to be unable to feel anything beyond the fury brought upon by his mutation.
- Truly Single Parent: Zarius.
- Urban Ruins: Everywhere, they are.
- Villain Protagonist: Ronald is among the three main humans, and eventually becomes the Big Bad.
- The Virus: The Kaiju Blight initially seems like just The Corruption, but as Ronald finds out, it is well on its way to becoming an airborne virus.
- Walking Wasteland: The City Breakers not only destroyed everything in their path, but their blood mutated the local wildlife and killed off 90% of all humans.
- Wretched Hive: Haven isn't the picture-perfect sanctuary it pretends to be. It's enforcement is carried out by some particularly thuggish folks, including Ronald Hicks and Miranda Stidham. Not everyone is a psychopath, mind you, but it's very much a place where unrest is high at all times.
