World War Z

I finished World War Z last night.  I won't come out and say I "loved" it but I certainly found it entertaining. 

The book is written as a non-fiction account of the zombie apocalypse and humanity's triumph over the zombie hordes.  There story is told through a collection of first hand accounts given by people in all walks of life. 

I particularly enjoyed the format of the book.  This is not another zombie story that follows the lone group of people trying to survive while slowly loosing their humanity.  This is about the world's reaction to an unbelievable incident.  The fact that the enemy is zombies is irrelevant.  It could have been aliens, or underground snake monsters.  The zombies really just serve as the catalyst and backdrop to the story.  What you really have here is a story about how a world separated by geography, politics, and culture can completely fail to recognize a threat before it is too late and how that same world can pull it together in the end.  Using the oral history format certainly gives the story a "Ken Burns" feel which I think is refreshing in the zombie genre.  The book, however, never really bogs down the way a real non-fiction account would. 

What is also refreshing is that the author does not spend a lot of time teaching us about zombie lore.  The reader is expected to know all about "Zach" so we don't get much exposition about the nature of zombies.  When those passages do come up, however, I think they are fairly original.  Zombies are scary for many reasons, but this book doesn't so much deal with the fear factor but relies on purely military reason why the zombie horde is such a formidable enemy.  Zombies don't fear anything so "shock and awe" strategies don't work.   Disabling zombies is not an effective strategy.  Traditional warfare is often about attrition but in the zombie war every time the living army looses a man, the zombie horde increases by one.  Think about that for a minute and you will see how this changes the rules of warfare.  There is no such thing as "acceptable losses" when fighting zombies as losses only make the enemy stronger.  I think this is where the book shines.  The strategies and tactics used to defeat millions and millions of zombies hasn't been explored as well before...except maybe in the Zombie Survival Guide, also written by Max Brooks.

There are also many other new additions to the zombie genre in the book including mentions of feral house pets, feral adults and children, as well as living humans so mental destroyed by the stress and fear that they act like zombies in order to feel safe.  Again, when Mrooks is fleshing out zombie mythology I think the book succeeds.

The book also feels woefully short and light on the little details that elevate a book from good to great.  Interesting events are mentioned but never detailed.  A real history would have a much richer set of stories.  The book is short at a little over 300 pages and by the end my first thought was that I something was missing or that the author just didn't take enough time to really flesh out his world.  The stories although individually unique move the narrative along very linearly.  I would have liked to have had more stories of important events from different characters in order to see how the major battles progressed as well as more individual, common man accounts.  Of course having too much of that would stop the natural progression of the story, but overall the book was light on detail.  I would like to see how this book would be different if Mr. Brooks wrote it 15-20 years later in his career.  A richer, more detailed world would have increased my enjoyment of the book and I think the "lightness" of the work is why I didn't love it.  I'd like to see what Steven King would do with the same format. 

Max Brooks is the son of Mel Brooks and former writer on SNL and a lot of his entertainment experience comes through in this book.  It reads like it was written to be turned into a movie or TV miniseries.  I think the idea would work well as a mockumentary and even better as a TV mini, especially if they did it Ken Burns style.  The rights have already been acquired by Brad Pitt's production company with J. Michael Straczynski writing the script.  I am interested in seeing what they come up with and I hope they take the material seriously and not try to make some kind of dark comedy out of the book.

In the end I really enjoyed the book.  It was fun and kept me reading the whole time.  I never had that moment when I wanted to go read something else.  Non-zombie fans will enjoy it because the zombies are not the main focus of the book.  It is very accessible to the layman while zombie aficionados will enjoy it for all of the new ideas Brooks brings to the zombie world.  I think it could have been longer with my stories and richer detail but the book is most enjoyable.