Tori's Review: World War Z by Max Brooks

World War Z by Max Brooks

Series: None
Genre: Horror, Zombies, Science Fiction
Rating: ★
Pages: 342Published by Crown in September 12, 2006
Date Finished: August 7, 2013
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The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.
Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve-year-old Patient Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plan provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable price, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally started to turn, this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War.

Most of all, the book captures with haunting immediacy the human dimension of this epochal event. Facing the often raw and vivid nature of these personal accounts requires a degree of courage on the part of the reader, but the effort is invaluable because, as Mr. Brooks says in his introduction, “By excluding the human factor, aren’t we risking the kind of personal detachment from history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it? And in the end, isn’t the human factor the only true difference between us and the enemy we now refer to as ‘the living dead’?”
Note: Some of the numerical and factual material contained in this edition was previously published under the auspices of the United Nations Postwar Commission.

If I were grading this book as if it were an essay, I would give Brooks an E for effort. I barely even finished it. I started it in June. Freaking June. I skimmed the last 100 or so pages. I wish I never bought this book (well, my mom did, and I deeply apologize to her).

And the writing wasn't even all that great. Okay, I take that back. I can't exactly judge the writing because it wasn't really his writing. It was basically an entire book of interviews of postwar survivors. So really, the writing wasn't all that bad. For the interviews/stories that I actually did happen to enjoy, the writing was very smooth and fit the particular character really well. But for the stories that I found extremely boring, I found the writing choppy and horrible.

This book was seriously just overall boring (except the few interviews that I really did like) to be honest. I don't get how it has 4.05 stars [out of 5] on Goodreads. It's just so terrible. I don't understand. I think it's either you love it or you hate it. My friend Ben loved it, while I hated it.

I feel like this book would be a thousand times better if Brooks had took one of these survivor's stories and turned it into a full length novel. Hell, he could've took multiple of the people's stories and made it into several novels and made more money. The way writes the book--in interviews--was just extremely boring and bland, and I didn't like it at all. I will probably never, ever read a Max Brooks book ever, ever again even though he writes zombies novels, which I love.

I don't even know. I can't comprehend the magnitude of the suckiness of this book. Seriously. I thought I was going to love this book, but I didn't. I hope the movie is better. I'm just going to wait until it comes out in Redbox. I'm not wasting $10 on that movie.

I thought I was going to have a whole rant on how much I hated this book, but I simply cannot explain my thoughts on this novel. I just didn't like it. I would've given it 0.5 stars, but I felt like Brooks deserved at least one start for writing this novel. It must've taken dedication for him to sit down and write 300 pages of...this.

On a final note, if you loved this book, please don't take offence to this review. This is just one person's opinion (mine) and it shouldn't affect your view on the book. Like I had said, it seems like you either love this book or you don't. I just happen to be a part of the latter.