The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years. (Goodreads)
Review by Laura Madsen: mom,
veterinarian and writer
In the aftermath of a global
zombie apocalypse, the anonymous narrator travels the world, collecting stories
from human survivors: soldiers and doctors, housewives and mercenaries, politicians
and survivalists. Each chapter is the recollections of a different person,
assembled into chronological order.
As I read the book the night
before Halloween, my husband asked, “Is it scary?” I answered, “Not scary in
the traditional sense of horror, but scary in the sense that you can totally
see everything happening, the way governments respond—everything is completely
plausible.”
Disregard for now the
zombies. Just think of any virulent, lethal, previously unknown infectious
disease. The virus spreads rapidly around the globe, transferred not only by
international commerce and travel, but also by the rampant black-market trade
in human organs. Some governments cover up outbreaks. Other governments
mobilize their armies—targeting civilians as well as the infected. Society
breaks down. A few intelligence officers figure out what’s happening and
hand-deliver an “Eyes Only” report to the White House, which is ignored and
relegated to a bottom desk drawer in a remote field office. A sensationalized,
televised battle between humans and zombies fails spectacularly when the army
shows up with fabulously expensive, high-tech weaponry that has no effect
against the enemy. Millions die after evacuating their homes—not from the
infection but from violence or starvation or exposure. Desperation. Panic.
Religious fervor. Nukes.
So, yes, it’s scary.
Max Brooks has clearly done
his homework, and the novel is well-written. The voice of each survivor comes
through clearly and their terror is evident, both in what they say and in what
is left unsaid, as in these passages:
From a soldier who was
witness to one of the first outbreaks:
Beyond them, in the first
chamber, we saw our first evidence of a one-sided firefight, one-sided because
only one wall of the cavern was pockmarked by small arms. Opposite that wall
were the shooters. They’d been torn apart. Their limbs, their bones, shredded
and gnawed…some still clutching their weapons, one of those severed hands with
an old Makarov still in the grip. The hand was missing a finger. I found it
across the room, along with the body of another unarmed man who’d been hit over
a hundred times. Several rounds had taken the top of his head off. The finger
was still stuck between his teeth.
From a girl who evacuated
with her family to the woods of northern Canada:
I was a pretty heavy kid. I
never played sports, I lived on fast food and snacks. I was only a little bit
thinner when we arrived in August. By November, I was like a skeleton. […] One
time, around Thanksgiving…I couldn’t get out of my sleeping bag. My belly was
swollen and I had these sores on my mouth and nose. There was this smell coming
from the neighbor’s RV. They were cooking something, meat, it smelled really
good. Mom and Dad were outside arguing. Mom said “it” was the only way. I
didn’t know what “it” was. She said “it” wasn’t “that bad” because the
neighbors, not us, had been the ones to actually “do it.”
Recommended for anyone who
has wondered, “What if?”
Market: Adult fiction
(post-apocalyptic/ sci-fi)
Language: moderate
Sensuality: none
Violence: explicit (zombies
eating people, people bashing in the zombies’ brains)
Mature
themes: war, pandemic, abandonment, nuclear bombs, oblique references to
cannibalism and prostitution.
Book formats:
3 comments:
Really good, thorough review. I'm not sure if this is my usual read, but it does sound intriguing. Thanks for sharing, I might just have to check this one out!
New to your blog,
Stephanie
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Stephanie, I agree, it's definitely not the kind of stuff I usually read, but it was amazingly good. I've been recommending it to everyone I know.
Welcome Stephanie!! :)
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