Review: World War Z by Max Brooks

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Rating: 4

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.

My Rating:
I am not going to lie and say that I have not been bitten by the undead in the way that I am quickly becoming a fan of everything and anything zombie. (Okay, maybe not everything.) One might ask what is so seductive about mutant beings that will heartlessly eat your flesh? Well, I can't answer that. But I can tell you to read World War Z so you will hop onto the zombie train like the rest of us.

Having read The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead, and loving the witty and realistic style that it was written in, I decided to move on to Brooks' next zombie novel. And I was even more impressed with World War Z.

Told through a series of very realistic interviews of first-hand accounts of the zombie apocalypse, in the midst of the slow recovery from the war, you will start to believe that the end of days actually happened. I know that the novel is not really nonfiction, but it was written so well that I would read and think maybe this did actually happen... Then proceed to my bedroom to sit in the corner, rocking in a fetal position as I repeat to myself over and over that the zombie virus did not yet come into existence as I planned out my survival plan and slept with the Survival Guide in my tightly clenched grasp.

I really enjoyed reading the different points of view, although - as expected - some more than others. Some of the interviews could get a little hard to get into, while others were absolutely brilliant. Altogether, the writing and the character development is done fantastically, and the way that the story is told is refreshingly different. I especially enjoyed how realistic the story was - I am not joking with what I said before.

I would highly recommend reading this for fans of history (especially alternate history) and zombies. I was definitely happy with this, and I am looking forward to see what they do with the movie adaptation.