World War Z

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
by Max Brooks
Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: Crown (September 12, 2006)
ISBN: 0307346609

FROM ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

Remember the final scene in Night of the Living Dead where the black guy gets blown away by that gun-toting redneck and you realize, Whoa, this movie is about more than just the undead? Max Brooks' first novel, World War Z, has about 10 times the number of moments like that. Of course, great zombie stories have never been solely about walking corpses. There's always a great metaphor at their core, the films of George Romero being prime examples.

Max Brooks (who's trod this ground before with 2003's entertaining but slight faux manual, The Zombie Survival Guide) concocts an addictively readable oral history — basically a collection of interviews — with people involved in the great human-zombie war. The conflict starts in China with a virus and spreads around the globe until the undead are everywhere. People panic, retreat, and then start to fight back.

The sheer number of voices (Russian priests, blind Japanese warriors, American grunts) that Brooks channels is impressive, and the abundance of movie-ready scenes (a Chinese submarine being attacked by clawing underwater zombies) is geekily cool. Yet World War Z is more than just an endless succession of filmable set pieces. With his surprisingly realistic takes on government inadequacy, disaster preparedness, and public panic, Brooks subconsciously references worldwide crises from 9/11 to tribal civil wars to Hurricane Katrina, producing a debut that will grab you as tightly as a dead man's fist. Grade: A

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I bought this book based on the review (above) I read in Entertainment Weekly. I thought the premise was interesting enough (I'm almost exclusively a Scifi/Fantasy/Horror reader) but what caught my eye was the grade of A bestowed upon a book in the Zombie genre. It must be good.
I picked it up from my neighborhood Borders book store on a Saturday afternoon. I had finished it by early Sunday morning. I can count on one hand, the number of books I've read in one day.
I enjoyed so many aspects of the book, from it's Ken Burns-style presentation to the grand scale of the world stage while Brooks communicates the individual stories of "The Plague Years." It's unique that the author chose to set the "present" 10 years after the end of "hostilities" enabling him to explain all those things we've wondered about after reading an apocolypic tale.
The characters voices are distinct and their stories are sad, funny, gut-wretching, inspirational, scary, but always interesting.
The zombies are almost bit-players in this novel, possibly because the focus isn't on them as much as it is on the people trying to survive the onslaught. I think that the premise is a nice combination of two kinds of diasters that realistically threaten most of the world today... death by disease and the terror of invasion.
Obviously, I recommend this book very highly, five out of five stars.