World War Z

If you’ve seen the movie it’s probably best to try and forget it before starting Max Brooks’s completely absorbing ‘fiction as history’ take on the (surely inevitable) zombie apocalypse. By employing the tropes of oral history Brooks manages the tricky task of conveying the vast scale of the crisis without losing sight of the human dimension. All in all a relentlessly compelling and deftly executed landmark in a somewhat over-saturated genre.

World War Z wasn’t what I expected, which is to say I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I’m a little squeamish about horror fiction, but this was much more of an alternate history than a horror novel.

The variety of character perspectives was fascinating and Max Brooks did a brilliant job of creating these unique and haunting voices, though I would’ve liked to get more of the story of the journalist collecting the narratives (other than the brief introduction). The histories are primarily from the point of view of men, mostly mercenaries and soldiers, as you would expect in an oral history of a war. It began to feel very real– or at least possible– as I got further into the book.

Emotions and personalities come across in some narratives better than others and the representation of humanity extends across countries, cultures and classes. The postwar “peacetime” setting makes it easy to compare to other eras in history, so the reader is jolted again and again by the descriptions of the enemy– the undead who do not need food, water or air, who will not ever surrender and have no purpose but to destroy humanity. It’s a chilling undercurrent throughout the book, one that demonstrates the author’s deft ability to mesh the realities of war with the fiction of zombies. This is the stuff of nightmares and “What if?” conversations– and a very entertaining (and creepy) read.

I picked this book up from the 2-for-1 table at Borders many years ago, and loved every page. World War Z reads like well-written history, which isn’t surprising because it’s supposed to be the oral history of the Zombie War, as told by the survivors.

Max Brooks is simply a genius. When he writes in the voice of the Chinese doctor who encounters (he thinks) the first zombie, it reads just like the tale told by a rural doctor faced by something he can’t explain. When he writes as an infantry veteran, the character sounds like a sarcastic grunt jaded by war and stupidity. Brooks jumps from accounts of the rank-and-file all the way up to the President of the United States and across nationalities, and each segment is riveting.

An outstanding work.

This book came out just when the zombie genera was gaining popularity. I believe that “The Walking Dead” graphic novels had been out for a while. I expected much of the same and it was not what received. I was pleased that this book was written the way it was.

As the title suggests, this is a eyewitness account of how the zombie infestation began and how it spread around the world. In a series of interviews and researched information, Brooks paints a believable picture of how people might look back on such an event.

No heart-stopping action here (not at all like the movie) and I enjoyed every page.

way better than the movie.

I enjoyed it, but wasn’t in love with it.

I think my expectations for this one were too high. I saw the movie first, and thought it was okay, which urged me to listen to the book because I thought I would have appreciated the subtleties that the movie did not deliver. In a way that was true, the film is a far cry from what the book was trying to explain in terms of political, economical, and social protection during pandemic crises. It’s much more political than we can imagine, but I think I would have preferred an actual story with a beginning, middle and an end rather than testimonials and first person accounts. It’s rather dry. I’m glad I listened to it. The different voices and actors gives it a real sense of authenticity.

I’ll confess I’m a big fan of the movie World War Z. It seems odd, then, that I would enjoy the mostly panned film adaptation and not like the book, especially when this book revitalized the genre and left its imprint on the apocalyptic sphere in a big way. Bestseller! Movie adaptation! It really had everything going for it. Ultimately, for a book that focuses on an oral history, which presumably would mean a human-centric narrative about lived experiences, it felt rather soulless. I can see why people enjoyed it; the writing is slick, there are a few good sections, but overall it felt like a bad nonfiction novel.

World War Z is not a narrative, at least not in the general sense. We are taken through the basic timeline of the in-universe zombie war, referred to by several different names including the titular World War Z, the beginning rumblings of plague rumors, the fight, and the aftermath. The novel is formatted as a series of transcripts of oral interviews, the same reporter touring the world to speak to a variety of people involved with the war in a variety of ways: we hear from government officials, soldiers, refugees, doctors, children, families, and people who were only tangentially involved in the situation. From here, we gather numerous experiences, giving us what I’ll admit is a well-rounded image of what the world looked like when the zombie plague hit.

Brooks writes with skill and a good voice, effortlessly changing from the personality of a woman stuck in the emotionally-stunted state of her childhood self to a smarmy pharmaceutical profiteer to a soldier grounded in the hand-to-hand combat of the war. Every character was distinct, each situation unique. The variety of people spoken to gives the reader not only the image of one side of the war, or one culture, or one location, but how the war affected everyone from all corners of the globe. Brooks is mired in his detail, obviously having done an intensive amount of research to ensure that the plague and the war that followed not only were scary, but technologically and strategically accurate.

So what’s my problem? With all these interviews, all these situations, all these incredible details, I’m not sure how I’m supposed to care about anything at all.

World War Z is the perfect example of how more detail doesn’t mean better. I felt like some of these sections were simply love letters to how much Brooks researched things, particularly warfare, with extensive explanation of military weapons, the naming of military strategies and operations, and how life is like for soldiers and generals on the ground. Instead of being enmeshed with a character’s feelings about the war or the horrors they went through, Brooks is busy describing the science of laser weapons and how ineffective they are. Instead of feeling the horror of a failed government official who wanted desperately to protect his people, we are sinking neck-deep into government protocol. Instead of a ravaging story about fleeing refugees, the character is for some reason going on about border laws in the time of war. None of this makes for a good story. You now have a book full of technicalities and devoid of heart. Sometimes, less is more.

This made it impossible for me to invest myself in the situation. The idea of a zombie war isn’t new to us (at least now, I understand Brooks was part of the movement to bring zombies back into the forefront of science fiction), so to create a real sense of horror we needed originality and characterization. Another popular piece of zombie media is The Walking Dead, which I’ve seen described as a drama with zombies. Regardless of how accurate that somewhat derisive statement is, I think that’s why it’s so popular: the mere idea of a zombie war isn’t scary to us, it’s our investment in the characters we grow to love. Because Brooks bounces around from character to character, it’s impossible for us to get attached. It doesn’t seem like Brooks is the type of author who’s interested in creating linear narratives, so I don’t want to hold his format against him, but I’ll bring it back to the excessive detailing complaint; it would’ve been easier to feel for these characters and their situations had they not spent almost their entire interviews prattling on about random details. There were a few interviews that I liked, ones that focused on the actual character and were almost totally removed from the warfare, like a woman trying to hike through the woods to safety or a blind man learning to fight zombies in the mountains. So it seems like Brooks is capable of creating moving narratives, he just can’t stop himself from beating the dead detail horse in militarized and government situations.

I’m willing to admit this book might be appealing to other people. I’ve heard from readers that they love the detailing, how it adds to the worldbuilding and makes everything seem more real, how the short interview styles make it easier to consume the book in smaller chunks. It seems like this book just isn’t for me. I would call it immensely technical, clunky, and soulless when it seems like others really appreciate it. And it certainly did leave its footprint on the science fiction world. If you’re into hyper-specific worlds and don’t care much about characterization or development, give it a try. I’ll give Brooks chops for his research skills, at least, but this is probably the only narrative where I’ll stick to the movie.

TW/CW: body horror, graphic violence, child death, cannibalism (not the zombie kind).

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One of the best books I’ve ever read

This is a good book if you like the end of the world stuff and zombies which i do i love fantasy sci-fi supernatural kind of books!!!!

On my shelf of favorite books. Max Brooks manages to make the excerpt form of writing immediate, exciting, touching and epic. The chapter on the Queen always makes me cry. It’s just terrific in every way.