Binah the Bold Reviews World War Z by Max Brooks

Paperback: 352 pages
Price: $7.45
ISBN-10: 0307346617
ISBN-13: 978-0307346612
Released: October 16, 2007

World War Z Website
Buy it via Amazon

Obtained: Via McK, who keeps telling me to stop doubting his taste in books.
Genre: Post-Apocapalyptic Mindf*ckery. Also, Zombies. (That's a genre now, right?)

"Since the end of official hostilities, numerous attempts have been made to document the Zombie War. WORLD WAR Z is the definitive account of the technological, military, social, economic, and political details as told through survivors' stories of how civilization went from the brink of extinction to a universal victory against the living dead."

My Rating: 4.5 wings mindlessly shambling corpses

My Opinion: Here’s the thing. I never reread a book I’ve just read. Like, seriously never ever ever. It doesn’t hold my interest, I remember all the plot points and things that were like MIND-NUMBINGLY HOLY-SHIT AMAZING are just kind of… meh.

I’m on my second read-through of WWZ and I am still totally absorbed and sucked into this book. Shit is so real you have NO IDEA.

This book was not what I expected. The formatting of it is something I’ve never encountered in fiction before (or if I have, it was obviously not done well enough to have caught my memory). I was intrigued when the book was first mentioned to me because, duh, zombies. The “oral history” bit in the title actually was kind of a turn-off for me at first. Oral history? I thought, That sounds dumb. I will admit this once – and only once – I was SO WRONG. It’s basically a bunch of anecdotes from a bunch of people who figured prominently in the war or were present when specific events occurred. The style of writing is so realistic you can’t help but get sucked in (I may or may not have had a nightmare about zombies. Shut up) and the journalistic interview-style notations are totally unobtrusive to the flow of the story.

My only complaint is that when you start reading the book, you’re pretty much dropped into the middle of a story that’s already over (the introduction tells you that the war ended 10 years ago). So the author assumes that you already know a lot of what he’s going over, including specialized words, people, places and events. About 1/4-way through the book, everything becomes really clear, but until then there are some what?? moments. (This may also be why my 2^nd time reading it is just as fascinating.) Also, I read freakishly fast and some of my friends keep coming to me like HUH??? and I'm like KEEP READING. So, you know, maybe you need to be a little patient (or willing to lose sleep) in order to really get into it.

Also, if you have problems with horror stories, maybe skip this one. The descriptions are so vivid, the people so real, it was hard to believe that the book was just fiction.

Next week we'll be back to reviewing awful books, but I caught the plague this week and decided that it wouldn't be the best time to read stories that make me want to die. ;)