Book Reviews
I’m no critic, but I do have an opinion. I enjoy reading and thought I might share my opinions on what I read on my blog. By now you have guessed that I enjoy science fiction and read a good deal of that, but I have been expanding my horizons. I am, however a very slow reader and ADD when it comes to books. I’m usually reading four or five at a time, but I will post what I think as I finish them. It just so happens that I just finished one…
World War Z
In The Zombie Survival Guide Max Brooks provides us with the cold hard details of what to expect when the zombies start rising and how to fend them off. He states facts and creates lists of the necessities. In World War Z, however he gives us the opposite of the cold information. He provides us with the stories of people who have fought for their survival. While the Guide made zombie fighting sound exciting, WWZ gives the reader a harsh taste of reality (sort of) in reminding them that this hypothetical situation would be terrifying. Where the Guide made it feel like the reader could go out and kick zombie butt then walk back inside, put on a cup of coffee, and watch Cheers reruns, WWZ vividly describes a world in chaos. It places the reader in a world where government incompetence allows a seemingly impossible virus to infect a majority of the world’s population, a world where people are forced to flee the comfort of their homes and routines and wall themselves up in whatever refuge they can find.
It is Brook’s creation of this world that sets his books apart from other zombie fiction. He established rules to govern the books and does not break from them, unlike Romero’s Dead series. One thing that always disappointed me about the Romero zombie films was the confined feeling, which I’m sure was in part intentional. Unfortunately, Romero only gives us the story of three or four people, when the disaster is supposedly worldwide. That’s what I loved about World War Z, Brooks provides all angles of the zombie uprising. You get to see how it is handled by different countries and people with different ideals.
No comments:
Post a Comment