Book Review:

World War Z:

An Oral History of the Zombie War

Max Brooks

2006, Three Rivers Press, USA

War/fantasy

10/10 stars

            Where were you the day the dead came back to life?  Perhaps you were fleeing to the coast, hoping that someone, somewhere would allow you room on their boat.  Or maybe you remained at home, comforting your children, shadowed by the bitter knowledge that your alleged “vaccines” and antibiotics may as well have been skittles.  You could have been fighting hordes of the undead on any front, from the terrestrial disaster at Yonkers, to the crippled air-force reduced to dropping supplies to isolated pockets of civilisation, from the few Chinese submarines that managed to escape their burning country, to the tiny group of astronauts who decided that keeping Earth’s communication network running was more important than their own lives.

 Wherever you were, Max Brooks has you covered.  World War Z is his report on the “human factor” of the Zombie War.  He leaves no stone unturned, be it American soldier, Russian priest, Chinese sailor or a doctor exiled to the tree-dwelling tribes of Brazil.  The accounts range from tragic to triumphant, fearful to foresighted.  A single common element binds the survivors’ stories – the contribution the tellers made to the war effort.  Troops, navy officers, mental patients, medical staff, architects, dog handlers, divers, business men, the retired US president; these are only a sample of the different points of view presented by Max Brooks.

 World War Z is a poles apart spin on the typical zombie story, and one I cannot recommend highly enough.  Set a decade after VC Day, when the last zombie was killed in Beijing, this alternate history of our contemporary world is written with a single, constant question in mind – what would happen is the Zombie War was real?

 For the range of scenarios and depth of detail, World War Z is as technically factual as a military report.  It’s divided into chapters which progress through the war chronologically; the first chapter, Warnings, covers the initial threats of breakout, before the story moves on to the realisation and reaction in chapter 2, Blame and chapter 3, The Great Panic.  The war in full is covered, from Turning The Tide, to the systematic eradication of zombies, even touching briefly on the future.  Each chapter is written as a compilation of interviews conducted around the chapter topic, each interview lasting between 2 and 15 pages.

 The number of interviews must number a hundred in total, with only a few recurring characters.  Each interview is presented with excruciating attention to detail, particularly when it comes to army toys.  However, references to TV shows, songs, and other pre-Z-War pop culture are not left unexplored, nor are the finer points of artistic detail.  Okay, okay, admittedly I had to laugh when the captain of the Chinese submarine apparently “painted over” his water colour painting, and then proceeded to use those same paints on the steel internal hull, and I guess there are other errors that flew right over my head.

 As you may suppose, the entire story is on the whole more relevant, or least more focused on a US audience, with maybe 50% of the interviews dedicated to every other nation.  Still, with such a contemporary atmosphere and powerful, engaging narrative, it’s hard to fault Brooks anywhere.  The narrative itself is excellent.  Some interviews had me reeling, stunned, after a sudden twist in the closing paragraph.  Never have I felt so connected to a story on an emotional level then with the story of Darnell and his dog, Maze.

Some stories stay with a reader for days – World War Z will be with you for years.  Full points go to Brooks for keeping the zombie myth intact, constant, and terribly, inhumanly frightening.

 World War Z is an ass-kicking, heart-stopping and often blood-chiling ride that’s earned every praise awarded to it.  Whether or not you dig zombies, dig this.  With its potent message and handy undead tips, it’s the next best thing to the Zombie Survival Guide.