Books, books, books

World War Z by Max Brooks



Maybe this is unfair, since I knew coming in that Max Brooks was Mel Brooks' son, and, hey, it's a book about zombies, so I thought it was supposed to be funny. It wasn't. I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just saying I thought it would be funny, and that wasn't the case, so maybe it has some influence into my thoughts on the book. Anyway, basically, it's a fictional oral history of a zombie war (obviously fictional as it's of a zombie war, but I always seem to add that anyway) taken by Brooks, working on behalf of the UN, via interviews from various parties throughout the world. As was noted on the wikipedia page somewhere, it is more or less a kind of horror meets alternative history. It's okay. It was interesting enough to keep reading it, and I liked the invented slang and vernacular several of the interviewees use when describing the battles and the technologies (the zombies are called "Zack"), and the way in which it really did sound like a real war - it was clear Brooks had looked into what would have been the most effective ways to kill zombies if they did exist. That said, it's hurt a bit by the lack of characters you could really hold on to, and a story that really drew you in - it was interesting, but it didn't suck me in through the second half, like my favorite books tend to. It's okay and relatively fast.

6.7