Sunday, November 18, 2007

Review: World War Z

Many apologies for the late post, but I'm in the middle of recovering from a nasty attack of malware that forced me to erase my hard drive. (No important files were lost, thanks to good backups, but it is a bit time-consuming, reinstalling everything.)

So nothing ambitious today, because I'm still recuperating, but let me take a moment to mention how very, very well 'World War Z', by Max Brooks, evokes the idea of a zombie uprising. It shouldn't surprise anyone who reads this blog that I heard the phrase "zombie uprising" and was right there in line to buy the book, but Brooks really does do an excellent job with the idea. The book takes the form of a number of "interviews" with survivors of the plague that reanimated the dead and gave them an uncontrollable hunger for the flesh of the living, and each interview is almost a short story in miniature. The various survivors' tales interlock to form a vast, sprawling narrative of a world in crisis, progressing from denial, to panic, to full-fledged chaos, and finally our struggle to fight back and reclaim our world.

At each stage, you'll be impressed with Brooks' sense of realism; having laid down ground rules for the zombie virus in 'The Zombie Survival Guide', he then proceeds to come up with very authentic human responses to a plague of the walking dead. I quibbled about a few things (I think, for example, that the military would come up with an effective response faster than they did--ultimately, no matter how implacable and terrifying zombies are, they're basically unarmed, unarmored people who use no subterfuge or tactics and move at a slow walking pace.) But Brooks paints a compelling picture, and gives each survivor a unique voice. I could have read a book twice this length, and I'd be more than happy to see a sequel out of Brooks.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Man, I love that book too. Max Brooks said he's doing some comics about the zombie attavks in the zombie survival guide in some interviews, seen anything on that?

Benticore said...

I've heard through rumors, dark and terrible, that the movie rights to this book have been purchased and before you know it, you will be watching a sweet, wonderful book tarnished on the silver screen.

I pray it is only a rumor. Not every good book needs to be a Hot Damn Movie!

Benticore
Out

Anonymous said...

The rumours are true. JMS is scripting. Beware.

John Seavey said...

I think it'd be a mistake to do it as a movie. A TV series, I'd watch. (Ooh, a mini-series, done in the style of Ken Burns' 'The Civil War'. How cool would that be?) But a movie would just have to cut away too much stuff, I would imagine.

Then again, the audiobook cut away a ton of stuff, and it's won awards.

Benticore said...

Can you imagine if (in a world where the writers get a fair deal and aren't striking, of course) HBO or Showtime got their hands on World War Z? It could've been so beautiful...

Dammit I feel like crying now...

Benticore
Weeping