I waited far too long to read World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. Max Brooks, I was surprised and pleased to discover, is the son of Mel Brooks; you can see that he comes by his Funny honest, with that sort of lineage to draw on. This book is chock full of Funny, to be sure--though it's a dark and deadpan sort of humor. The humor initially pulls you in, but what actually keeps you is a solid and riveting story to back it up and soon make you forget about the initial BWAHAHAHA of the premise.
And the premise is giggle-worthy enough: what happens when a worldwide outbreak of zombies nearly drives the human race to extinction. The book's schtick is that of an unnamed narrator called upon to compile a report of how humanity survived, only to be ordered to excise all the "human factor" elements that he then decides to turn into a book. The only real glimpse you get of the narrator is in the introduction. Through the bulk of the book, the real characters are the "interviewees" that are the survivors of World War Z. The scope of their stories swerves from the national down to the personal and back again, showing you the big picture of what happens with the countries of the world contrasted with the survival stories of individuals. All of it is amazingly and deeply detailed, from Israel's announcing a quarantine of its entire country clear up through the American charge eastward over the Rockies to take back the country from the hordes of the undead. But the parts that shone the clearest for me were the individual stories, from the account of the young woman whose parents had fled with her into the Canadian north only to face increasingly desperate conditions--including cannibalism--to the old blind survivor of Hiroshima who took on the holy calling of training Japanese survivors to cleanse the ghouls from their land.
In fact, this quote from that old sensei's story really sums up the coolness of this book: "We might be facing fifty million monsters, but those monsters would be facing the gods." BOOYA.
And needless to say, four stars. ^_^
And the premise is giggle-worthy enough: what happens when a worldwide outbreak of zombies nearly drives the human race to extinction. The book's schtick is that of an unnamed narrator called upon to compile a report of how humanity survived, only to be ordered to excise all the "human factor" elements that he then decides to turn into a book. The only real glimpse you get of the narrator is in the introduction. Through the bulk of the book, the real characters are the "interviewees" that are the survivors of World War Z. The scope of their stories swerves from the national down to the personal and back again, showing you the big picture of what happens with the countries of the world contrasted with the survival stories of individuals. All of it is amazingly and deeply detailed, from Israel's announcing a quarantine of its entire country clear up through the American charge eastward over the Rockies to take back the country from the hordes of the undead. But the parts that shone the clearest for me were the individual stories, from the account of the young woman whose parents had fled with her into the Canadian north only to face increasingly desperate conditions--including cannibalism--to the old blind survivor of Hiroshima who took on the holy calling of training Japanese survivors to cleanse the ghouls from their land.
In fact, this quote from that old sensei's story really sums up the coolness of this book: "We might be facing fifty million monsters, but those monsters would be facing the gods." BOOYA.
And needless to say, four stars. ^_^
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