Book Review: World War Z

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, by Max Brooks

An American journalist travels the globe to interview survivors of the zombie war. The book describes how the entire war unfolded from the initial warnings of the pandemic to the start of peace ten years later, through those who lived it.

Firstly, you can't really compare the book and the film. I'm usually the type to say that the novel is always better than the film but I can't even do that this time because they're just too different to compare - to say Marc Fortsters's World War Z was loosely inspired by the book is a bit of an understatement. It's a shame really when you consider how much action there is in the novel which would have worked really well on screen!

I did like the format of the book. I've never read something entirely composed of fictional interviews and for the topic it worked well. Some have criticised that the author took the easy way out by structuring the book like that as we essentially know how things pan out before we even read the first interview, so it's not like there are any captivating plot twists, and there isn't any real character development as we only stay with one person for a few pages at most. I don't mind any of that as the book was really trying to look at the politics involved and how different countries dealt with the pandemic, and I felt that Brooks had a good enough understanding of various cultures in order to be able to execute that well. Still, the main issue I have with the whole book is that all of the characters speak in the same voice. Despite having interviews with men and women of differing ages and nationalities 99% of the characters sound the same, and as a result I can only remember a handful of stories out of a book which is full of them. I understand that it must be difficult to switch up your writing style to produce a different tone for each person, but in order to write a book like this where there's no main character it's important to make sure each individual is personable and memorable.

Nevertheless, one of the strengths of this book is how realistic it could be. However unlikely a zombie apocalypse might sound, Brooks doesn't skip over anything and describes just how something like that could happen from start to finish. Personally, my favourite part was hearing about how England dealt with the situation, but I'll let you find that out for yourselves!

My rating: 3.5/5