World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

If you’re looking for a take on the whole “Zombie Apocalypse” thats more in a serious and grittier tone than say “The Walking Dead” graphic novels then this book is for you. The story literally takes you all over the world with different survivors and their experiences serving the undead. The audiobook version is certainly worthwhile too as it contains some pretty cool voices of the likes of Henry Rollins, Mark Hamill, and Alan Arda. My only complaint that I have with the book is that because the book is essentially a bunch of short stories, some stories are more entertaining than others and if you’re not into the story at hand you might get bored but thankfully that wasn’t too often. Totally recommend otherwise especially with the movie and video game out expanding the name.

Could humanity survive the zombie apocalypse? A lot depends on whether the zombies are walking or running. In the movie made based on this book, the zombies run. (More than one far better movie could have been made from the various stories told in the book, by the way. For example, Bollywood should look into filming the exploits of General Raj-Singh.) In the book itself, however, they walk or crawl, which is key to the human victory. Early in the book, there are references to reports by retired intelligence people or the military which could have limited the death toll if their recommendations had been implemented, which the politicians apparently thought couldn’t happen in the aftermath of Iraq.

It was inevitable that my church’s sci-fi book group would choose this as the first book of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the only similarity to the actual pandemic is that the disease originates in China. The Chinese effort to cover it up is more successful in the book, to the extent the disease enters the popular consciousness as “African rabies.” South Africa is apparently where the first zombie swarms overrun whole neighborhoods.

There are no known cases of the Chinese selling the organs of deceased COVID-19 victims, as happens to some of the first zombie plague victims. In general, in fact, the authors of this book were too pessimistic. Iran is not really a nuclear power, no fake vaccine has been marketed in the United States, and most of the media has not sought to cover up how bad the pandemic is. (If it were one hundred percent fatal, of course, things might be different.) The references to Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro as being alive during the pandemic kind of date the book (it was published in 2006), but I couldn’t bring myself to deduct a star for that. It was more than made up for by the fact that the President and Vice-President of the US during the war, based on their descriptions, are apparently Colin Powell and Bernie Sanders. There’s a dream team for you. I wonder if Barack Obama has read this book. I wonder if it wasn’t actually the last book he read before he announced his campaign.

I am reflecting a good deal on why I loved this book while I hated “A Brief History of Seven Killings” for being too brutal. I finally realized what bothered me about the latter book is not the brutality, but the fact none of the killings seem to be for a good reason. In “World War Z,” the humans just want to survive and the zombies just want to feed. Which is not to say you respect the zombies, you want them to die. All the characters are well fleshed-out (forgive the pun). Five stars.

This is 100% not the movie; the only thing the movie had in common with this book is the title. At least, that’s what I believed when I bought it, figuring that the book was good enough that someone wanted to make a movie out of it, but realized how difficult a book like this would be to adapt.

I certainly wasn’t disappointed; it’s simply a collection of various perspectives from dozens of different people who were involved with the “war,” giving us perspective about what went on world-wide, as opposed to the extremely narrow view of the world you get with most stories in this genre. This is the one thing I feel like World War Z, the movie, gave us that other movies/shows have not – a world wide perspective of what happens. Other than that, the similarities with the book and movie pretty much end there.

It’s not a survival story – all the interviews take place post “apocalypse,” so they are technically all survivors. We get insights how individuals dealt with the “great panic,” how governments handled it, what they did right, what they did wrong, and what are the ramifications of the world-wide pandemic.

It’s not like some sort of nail biting, edge of your seat drama, but it’s an extremely interesting perspective. Given our current global pandemic, it’s interesting to see how well Brooks captured so many realistic aspects of how people reacted, so many similarities: deniers/hoaxers, ignorers, government cover ups, people making millions pushing false “cures.” It’s definitely an interesting book to read during the real pandemic.

An honest 4/5 stars – it’s a really good book, worth your time if you like the genre, but there are certainly books that are better than this, so it’s hard to give a full on 5 stars.

I enjoyed the movie but was not satisfied with the deus ex machina. I bought the book hoping to read a more detailed explanation of that. Well, some scenes from the book are used in the movie but not much else. The book is about various cultural responses to solve the same problem. There is no quick solution.

I give it 4 stars. The author did a good job of researching the cultures but there was an occasional glaring error. A Chilean speaking refers to the American president as a “gringo”. But that is an ethnic pejorative for United Statesians in Mexican Spanish. A language with a worldwide spread, like English or Spanish, has a lot of localized usages.
———————————————————————–
For reasons unknown and unknowable Amazon has just sent me an email insisting I review something I already reviewed a week ago.

Nao gostei do formato que o livro foi escrito. Sou fan incondicional de estorias de terror e zombie em geral. Fiquei bem desapontado. Acho que foi o primeiro caso na historia em que eu gostei mais do filme do que do livro. Beeeeem mais do filme inclusive. Nao conseguiu me preender. No entanto, fui ate o fim. Uma pena.

Galaxyaudiobook Member Benefit

- Able to comment

- List watched audiobooks

- List favorite audiobooks

- Bookmark will only available for Galaxyaudiobook member