(Yes, I’m on a bit of a review kick at the moment, just humour me)
Now then, I like zombies. I’ve never met one personally, as you can probably tell by the fact that I have all my limbs, can string together coherent sentences (on a good day) and don’t smell like rotting flesh (no-one say “debatable”). Still, I like zombies – I like the folklore and the stories and also the funny t-shirts you can get (yes, I do have one and yes, you can see it).
(if you can’t see it properly, it says “ZOMBIE – Eat Flesh”, in the Subway font)
So yeah, we’ve ascertained that I’m a fan of zombies. Shaun Of The Dead is one of my favourite films, and I’ve watched a couple of films in Romero’s zombie series too, although I’ll admit I found those a little scary. I’ve seen 28 Days Later, which I loved, and I like shooting zombies on Call Of Duty. However, I don’t think I’d ever read a book about zombies until “World War Z – An Oral History of the Zombie War”.
As far as the zombies themselves go, it’s quite hard to picture them how I think Max Brooks intended for them to be pictured unless you’ve read his other similar book, the Zombie Survival Guide, which discusses what they look like. I think it’s pretty much standard fare with zombies though – they all smell, they all look a bit rotten and bloated and you don’t really want to get a good close-up view of one, because that’s a slippery slope to having your arm chewed off – so that’s not a fault with the book at all (by the way, I do recommend reading Zombie Survival Guide before you read World War Z, because it helped me understand what was going on a lot better).
What I love about this book is that it stays true to the quintessential zombie – the zombies can’t run or climb walls, they don’t have that tiny drop of human emotion that may allow them to decide not to eat a dear old aunt or a pet dog – they are devoid of all emotion and intelligence, they can only communicate by moaning, their method of transportation is a shuffle, and the only way to destroy them is to go for the brain. They’re made into zombies by a virus, “Solanum”, and there’s no real cure – although a vaccine was developed but rendered useless. This book shows humanity at its most terrifying – in a form that is beyond saving, beyond reasoning, beyond appealing to a better nature. You don’t have to seek them out to find them – they’re all around you, they’re your family and friends and the people you love and eventually, they’re you too. That’s what makes zombies the ultimate horror novel/film subjects – in my opinion, anyway.
The only fault I can find with the book is that because of the nature of the novel – it is a collection of anecdotes and eyewitness accounts, as opposed to an actual novel -, it can get hard to remember who said what and what exactly happened at earlier points in the timeline of the zombie war, because there are so many conflicting accounts and it takes place in a number of different countries, so unless it’s one of the main events of the war – like Yonkers, for example – it can be quite hard to remember exactly what happened and the effect it had on other situations. Still, the book is made so unique by its style that to change it would detract from it, so I suppose if you’ve got a good memory, you’ll be fine. Even with a rubbish memory like mine, the book is still a great one and I really enjoyed it.
I’d recommend the book for those who are 16+, there’s some (ok, a lot of) swearing in there, and I think under-16s may find it a bit too frightening, because it does go into very graphic detail about the zombies and what they did. If you don’t like death/gore/icky things, this is probably a book to avoid, but if you’re a fan of the whole zombie genre, I’d definitely recommend it. You can tell that Max Brookes knows his stuff, because everything – except the zombies – is real. He did thorough research into every piece of information, every military tactic and weapon, everything, and it works – we see the events of the novel as a real possibility, and the novel almost feels like a history book sent from the future, which adds to the fear factor.
Oh, and don’t worry if you haven’t heard of this book yet – by this time next year, I predict that it’ll be one of the biggest crazes out there.
the life of a moomin 