Book Review: World War Z by Max Brooks

World War Z

An Oral History Of The Zombie War

by

Max Brooks

Genre:

Zombies!

Published:

September 12th 2006 by Crown

Literary Awards:

Audie Award (2007)

Abraham Lincoln Award Nominee (2012)

My Rating:

 ☆☆☆

SYNOPSIS:

The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.

Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve-year-old Patient Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plan provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable price, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally started to turn, this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War.

Most of all, the book captures with haunting immediacy the human dimension of this epochal event. Facing the often raw and vivid nature of these personal accounts requires a degree of courage on the part of the reader, but the effort is invaluable because, as Mr. Brooks says in his introduction, “By excluding the human factor, aren’t we risking the kind of personal detachment from history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it? And in the end, isn’t the human factor the only true difference between us and the enemy we now refer to as ‘the living dead’?”

MY THOUGHTS:

At first, I found it a little difficult to follow what was going on because of the 'interview' format but I soon caught on and breezed through it. (Well, I breezed through it when I gave myself the chance to read it.)

 So this book is basically just a series of interviews with people from all over the world after the fictional 'World War Zombie' that give their own little stories about everything that happened, etc.

I did find it to be quite interesting since I had never read a book written like this before. I think it took me longer to read because it wasn't a typical fiction novel. It took me a while to get interested in what each person had to say and when I found an 'interview' that I particularly liked, it was over too soon and I had to get used to someone else's story instead. There were some chapters that weren't ALL military or political references that I found enjoyable, but they were rare.

Truthfully, I was expecting quite a bit more out of it but I'm just going to blame that on the movie trailer. Of course, I should have known that it wouldn't be exactly the same, but the movie trailer gives more of an idea of a plot and storyline than the actual book.

I think that men in the military or guys that love to play Black Ops 'Zombies' (or other first person shooter or zombie games) would really enjoy reading this book.

Just in case you haven't seen it yet, here is the movie trailer for the upcoming film adaptation that will be in theaters on June 21st, 2013 in the USA.

My thoughts about this trailer:

For some reason, this reminds me of 'I Am Legend'. Maybe because the zombies seem to be superhuman corpses very much like the vampires from 'I Am Legend' which ironically, I have seen sooo many people refer to as zombies instead of vampires. I didn't mind the 'runners' in 'The Forests of Hands and Teeth' trilogy by Carrie Ryan, but the thought of zombies that are super fast and kind of work together to create ladders up walls just kind of blows my mind. Even if zombies could run, I just can't fathom them being like they are in this movie trailer (like ants scurrying over one another).

This also gives off the idea of a plot. A guy and his family that get caught up in the zombie war.

I'm very interested in seeing how and if they make this movie ANYTHING like the book at all, and if not, why not just call it something else. Since when do movies borrow the name of a book but not actually go by the book's content at least a little?

Overall, I wasn't disappointed with the book. It just wasn't what I was expecting.