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In fact, sometimes you end with the desire of knowing more of particular histories or survivors, more about what happened.We have all sort of histories, from frozen zombies in the northen part of the globe, to military mistakes that end with heavy decimation of the US forces, doctors, rich and powerful people.The author touches a lot of cliches, from typical zombie movies ones, adaptations of "I Am Legend" (even the military call some survivors LMoE, Last Man on Earth, for their surviving skills), interesting (and some very clever) tactics to detect and avoid zombies (using trained dogs, placing tape on the perimeters of the bases so that if a tape is broken a zombie is inside,.).I enjoyed a lot the scientific approach to how to survive a global zombie plague, how would each government reach, what would happen if you were in the coast, in a city, in a small village, in the jungle, in a boat. It felt a bit short for my personal taste, and the finale was a bit too typical (very. Being a zombie films addict, I must say I was predisposed to enjoy the book, but it has been a real surprise.The book is a compedium of small stories, told 10 years after World War III, aka World War Z because it was not fought between humans, but between humanity and a world-scale zombie plague. Even how you could try to make money from the situation.Really a lot of situations and themes have been cleverly though and depicted in the short stories.The book hooks you until you finish it. "patriotic").Definetly a recommendation for reading as soon as possible ;) With this curious but not nobel-winning plot you could expect anything, and the results are amazingly good.Brooks has taken a "realistic" approach, explaining as much as possible (taking into account we're talking about zombies ;) of the science of the plague, how it spreads around the world, how different countries, governments and cultures react to it, how each of the survivors is able to tell his/her history, etcetera.I really like the approach. You never get tired of a history you don't like because they are at most 10 pages long.
I could not help feeling that there would be no meaningful payoff as the preceding pages betrayed not a hint that the succeeding pages would offer any redemption. All fictional horror whether filmed, written or rendered in a video game is rife with subtext whether the intention to include this subtext was the result of a conscious decision or not, after all when you strip away all the trappings of horror we are speaking of matters of survival, of life and death itself, indeed one can almost imagine feeling a tingling in the amygdala just sitting in a dark theater awaiting the start of the latest, greatest scary flick. I had already perused the books at my local Borders for over a half an hour and this book was the only one that really seemed interesting to my mood that day.
It was in fact this aspect of the film that really left its mark on me. Brooks had spent more effort fleshing out his characters and yes, pondering upon the allegorical richness inherent in the subject matter because regardless of how tiresome or quaint this approach may seem it is still vastly better than anecdotes that read slightly more interesting than dry testimony in some official report. "World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War"I'm not really a zombie kind of guy although I will confess to really liking George A Romero's Dawn of The Dead. I was a teenager when I first saw it and was really impressed by the sheer horror of the realism. Also, just look at how certain role playing horror games are classified, with one of those rare instances in which a Japanese phrase is awkwardly translated into English but actually proves more apt than any already existent English equivalent: Survival Horror.Dawn of the Dead was not just merely an exhibition of zombies eating flesh as society crumbled around the survivors; it was in fact one of the most astute meditations on mindless American consumerism. Consumerism is but one of the many metaphors that can be illustrated by the zombie genre and the promise of exploring a few possible metaphors was running through my mind as I read the blurbs on the back cover of World War Z.
Ironically I believe that this book might have benefitted from actually being longer if only Mr. The possibility that I chose a good book was even reinforced by the clerk at checkout who spoke very highly of it."World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War" essentially, is a collection of personal anecdotes of survival as told to the fictitious author who cobbled them together to paint a "compelling" picture of survival painted against the backdrop of global politics. It would seem that in his attempt to perhaps try something new rather than resort to yet another exercise in dwelling on various zombie metaphors or creating new ones Mr. This is the part where I confess that I had to force myself to keep reading but finally gave up after having only read it three quarters of the way through. The protagonists in this film logically decide to fortify and hold up in a shopping mall for the obvious reason of availing themselves of the many provisions and supplies available there. Brooks became too bogged down in the physical logistics of the various survival scenarios at the expense of drama, suspense or meaningful character development, in fact the characters all seem to be of nearly identical quality in spite of the many differences in their cultures or national origin. I don't just mean the realistic ways in which Tom savini found to render gore but also the way Romero showed just enough of a breakdown in society to let my imagination run wild.
While Max Brooks does display an authentic feel and flavor for the various settings around the globe in which these testimonies take place I must say he falls far short in the "compelling" department. This would seem to suggest that mindless consumerism has so gripped our culture that the simple act of shopping has, by sheer repetition and reinforced by feelings of instant gratification, been retroactively hard wired into our brains as an actual instinct and this indeed is driven home by the fact that the zombies waddle through the mall lured like fish by the glitz and glare of shiny products in an apparent parody of real world shoppers that is sadly much less a parody than an accurate depiction. As far as the zombie sub-genre is concerned, in addition to Romero's Dawn of The Dead there are few examples of this genre that I could seriously say I have really enjoyed. By visual example and also via exposition Romero exhibits a mall that first must be cleared of zombies who, having retained a faint, distant memory of their former lives return to the mall that once held a such prominent place in their lives.
How can a zombie survive unless its heart is pumping blood through its veins to supply its cells with nutrients and oxygen. While I wanted to love this book, I could only like it. The discord between the rest of the novel's realistic real world ascompared to "do anything" zombies just did not work for me. Otherwise this is a story of magic zombies, that can do anything. While the author is realistic in most aspects in the book, he removes the logic of biological processes when it comes to the zombies. How can a zombie moan, unless it breathes, and thus has air to pass over its vocal cords.
I need to read it again as I first read it when it came out, so it's been well over a year. I read it and convinced my husband to at least read a couple chapters, and he got pulled into the story and didn't put it down until he'd read the entire book. It's that good, it has re-reading potential. I'm too squeamish to watch zombie movies or any other horror movie, so books are where I get my thrills 'n' chills fix. World War Z was an excellent book, it is so engaging.
In some ways the style of the story, a collection of interviews taken ten years after the end of hostilities of a ten year long war, reminds me of Stephen King's Carrie. The idea of a world war against zombies is not something that actually appeals to me, not even as a bad movie, yet, compelled to at least flick through the book by the buzz around it, I found that it was a fast-paced and an intriguing read. Now, I'm sure lots of books have used such a method to tell such a tale, but I can also imagine that in the genre of zombie lit, it is a rare thing to find.Well thought out and conceived, this is a thoughtful tale, and so short and punchy that any one feeling that they're moving into an experimental reading zone, should feel reassured that at least the trial will not be lengthy.If you like snippets from the frontline, and tales of global catastrophe, give it a try. World War Z is a short and punchy tale, something not normally my style, but I am pleased to say a lot of fun, and I'm glad that I was tempted by it. Personally, I'm more the dark fantasy kind of guy, where everything is serious and bleak.
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