World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
Book Review: This book on zombie warfare rocks
Summary: 5 Stars
Very gripping. Great page-turner, imaginative. He takes a ludicrous premise and goes at it, never disbelieving, and relentlessly peppering it with everyday details and dead-pan accounts of an unstoppable horde. He has some imagination, and has obviously mulled over the question of what the world would be like faced with a zombie plague at great length.
The format, like Cloverfield, is the real star here though. Using interviews as the basis for the text allows him to cherrypick his scenarios, so that they are nearly all worth reading. favourite moments: (SPOILER ALERT) the grunt who swears blind he was fighting alongside Michael Stipe, and the Chinese naval officer who steals his countries most bad-ass nuclear sub. Also loved the use of waterborne zombies, very startling and just plain creepy thing to think about. Makes Jaws seem like a rubber duck.
Book Review: Terrific
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a mocumentary style horror book concerning a war between the living and zombies. Utterly pointless but highly entertaining and stylishly put together. If horror and in particular zombies are your thing then you will absolutely love this. Not a gruesome or gory book and at times quite intelligent. Recommended for pure escapism.Book Review: Astoundingly good
Summary: 5 Stars
This is, without doubt, the best work of zombie fiction I've encountered. Gripping, beautifully written and well paced. The characterisation is convincing and the storyline captivating.
Essential reading for every zombie obsessive and anyone intending to make it through the imminent zombie apocalypse.
Book Review: The No. 1 Zombie Book
Summary: 5 Stars
To me this is the book to have if you have no other zombie book - I like it more than any other book and have actually read it more than twice - which is a first for me! There is so much detail and knoweldge in this book, the story is so tied in to reality that you could just believed that this has all really happened. The ideas are so scarey and so real that its the sort of book you could discuss indefinately.
BEST BOOK - BUY IT NOW!
Book Review: Chillingly Effective
Summary: 5 Stars
Compiled by an unnamed narrator, furious at having the personal accounts he collated for a UN investigation into the causes and progress of the War excised from the final report, WORLD WAR Z is essentially a compilation of stories from individuals who describe what happened to them before, during and after the war. It's a brilliant device and one that makes the telling of this story chillingly plausible, with Brooks using it to draw out the global nature of the zombie pandemic. He includes 'interviews' with an extraordinary range of people, from a Chinese village doctor who reported one of the first cases, to an industrialist who sells a fake cure, to an American soldier who tried to hold back the hordes, to people charged with reconstructing the devastated countries after the zombies have been driven to defeat. The narration has a peculiar documentary feel to it - sometimes, the survivors tell their stories in the form of a monologue, sometimes the narrator intersperses it with questions, but rather than being distracting, this helps to make the book even more effective.
The book's biggest strength is the careful consideration that Brooks gives as to how a zombie infection would spread and the effect it would have on the population. He picks out people and organ trafficking in the Far East to show how the infection could cross continents and satirises the media, with their constant focus on cures and progress to show panic whipping up amongst the general population, together with the interests of businesses seeking to use the plague as an additional way of making money. He also imagines how some regimes will use brutality to restore order and for me, the sections recounting the decimations used to quell mutiny in the Russian army are the most chillingly observed in the book.
Some readers may find some of the survival stories a little far fetched e.g. the story of the elderly, blind Japanese man was slightly too much for me, but is nevertheless entertaining and exciting. As a Brit, I also had a quibble about the section from an English survivor who I felt to be a little too stereotypically upper class to be believable and a section from an Australian survivor describes the English as 'limeys' rather than 'poms'. But these are picky points that certainly didn't detract from my enjoyment of the text.