World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Bookshelves: speculative-fiction, my-dystopia-utopia, post-apocalyptic, creepy-horror-stuff, monsters-and-such, urban-fantasy
Fun fact: Two books in a row (this one and the one I read right before it, Red Sparrow) both had the new-to-me word spetsnaz in it. I have to say that makes me a little uncomfortable, with Russia already so much in our news lately.
To the book. I don’t like horror-type critters. Zombies, werewolves, vampires written by anyone other than Anne Rice, and maybe Stephen King. But I adore post/apocalyptic and dystopia stuff, so I split the difference and gave WWZ a chance.
I was pleasantly surprised. Written in the form of an oral history, it’s fiction that reads like non-fiction that reads like a novel–the best of both worlds. Yes, there are zombies, and they moan and slaver and shamble mindlessly and relentlessly toward their prey, but the book is relatively low on gore and much higher on intelligence, much more cerebral than just drooling monsters. At its heart, it tells, in very realistic style, of the social, health, economic, environmental, political, and humanistic impact of an apocalypse of unspeakable nature.
Not to be missed, really.*
*Not gonna watch the movie though. I particularly don’t do zombies visually.**
**I didn’t even like the zombies in ASOIAF, and I love GoT, even if I did finally get mad and break up with George, because him ever finishing that series is just like the boyfriend who swears he’s gonna propose soon, he’ll do it soon, he’s gonna do it, okay? And you finally realize it’s never gonna happen and you swear off him like a bad habit. Like that.
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