World War Z

World War Z – Max Brooks

The Zombie War, or World War Z as it is frequently called, was truly a world war that affected every single person on the planet. From the depths of the ocean floor, to the farthest reaches of northern Canada, every person was scared of, impacted by, and fundamentally changed because of the zombie plague. Ten years after nations began declaring victory against the zombies, author Max Brooks has put together a collection of oral histories from survivors of World War Z. He talks to anyone and everyone, from the man who patented the “cure” for “African Rabies,” to a militant teenage Zionist (I think, it was early in the book and I can’t remember for sure) who hates his family’s decision to move to Israel as part of a quarantine plan, to a Russian priest who takes it upon himself to shoot those who have been bitten by zombies so they do not have to commit suicide. Everyone was impacted by the Zombie Wars, and Brooks brings all the difficult decision and personal struggles together in a chilling recollection of a time of worldwide disaster.

Fantasy is an excellent genre for critique, and Brooks leaves out no perspective. While the bulk of the people he “interviewed” are involved in military campaigns, Brooks does an excellent job at including people you wouldn’t normally think of. He writes about the people who trained the K-9 recon team, what it was like to take out zombies on the ocean floor, and the transporters who snuck people in and out of countries before boundaries became impassable. It even comes complete with footnotes. It is an utterly believable account of the Zombie Wars. At first, I focused on the critique, but I quickly got caught up in the experiences of the war and what led some countries to focus on themselves and others to join an international effort. Then, being me, I got stuck on how the zombies functioned. Supposedly, the only way to kill a zombie was to destroy its brain, but it doesn’t seem to function like a human brain because humans can’t survive on the ocean floor. Also, although zombies are in a continual and escalating state of decomposition, which makes it absurdly easy to pull of limbs, they are monstrously strong. How does that work? Maybe he explains it in his other book, “The Zombie Survival Guide,” which I have yet to read.

I highly recommend this book, if only because it is so brilliantly original. Instead of talking about the great zombie plague, he talks about the repercussions. He crafts so many different and believable characters through his interviews, and covers all the topics and nuances that the average citizen probably wouldn’t even consider in a war effort. He has done very thorough research. I didn’t quite get a haunting feeling from the story of how to survive without understanding the basic needs of life, the perpetual fear of an indomitable enemy, and disaster choking out life on all sides, but I enjoyed the book for plenty of other reasons, largely because it is so creatively and thoroughly planned. It’s a great read; you should definitely pick it up.