World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
Author: Max Brooks
Rating: ā 3/5
Date Read: 2014/04/30
Pages: 341
So yeah, this is a best selling book about zombies. Itās fun and actually somewhat decent, but only somewhat, so Iām morally obligated to give it three stars, no more, no less. Because, even though Iāve already said that Iām absolutely fickle with stars, I still think they should mean something.
Zombie apocalypse. It starts small, gets bigger, mass chaos ensues, humanity tries to figure out how to rebuild. You know the tropes: the real difficulty is in facing ourselves as the enemy and yada yada yada. The one thing thatās particularly effective is that World War Z is styled as an oral history. At first, I thought this would be annoying, but it ended up being surprisingly refreshing. The whole oral history thing allowed Max Brooks to tackle some of the political and philosophical issues implicit in said zombie apocalypse. Thatās pretty cool.
I still have a hard time understanding how so many people are so interested in reading over-the-top fictionalized end of the world scenarios, while over in the real world a sizable proportion of people fail to recognize that we are actively and catastrophically destroying our environment, our climate, and the planet in general. So thatās something to think about. Too bad climate change isnāt as sexy as a zombie apocalypse.