World War Z — Thomas Meis

This was an interesting book. It is a collection of stories from various survivors of the zombie war, dubbed, surprisingly, World War Z. It is part globetrotting adventure, and part short story collection. It really tells these micro-stories that all add up to the larger story of the zombie war, if that makes sense. You have celebrities holing up on tropical islands, submarines going rogue and finding zombies underwater, downed pilots making their way to safety using nothing but their training and (maybe) a helpful voice on the radio. Overall, the chapters are pretty compelling, with some duds, but I think this is where the audiobook really helps to prop each individual story up. When you have someone like Mark Hamill really going to town with a role, it is instantly more compelling. Some stories stand on their own, like the Battle of Yonkers, but there are a notable number that are pretty forgettable.

For a while a couple of years ago, this book was can’t miss. Everyone was all-in on zombies, and this seemed like on of *the* books on the subject. Extremely entertaining and pretty well thought out, I haven’t met a single person who dislikes it. So maybe my expectations were too high, but I only thought this book was ok, and that is at least in part because of the audiobook performances. A ton of the characters have the same voice and manner of speaking. Even when different characters are speaking in the audiobook, Max Brooks’ voice still shines through, which is not a good thing in this case. It comes off more as “Max’s tells you what happened when all the zombies attacked” than “each character tells their story.”

Another issue I had was the format of this book. Brooks is writing it as an addendum or postscipt to a history textbook, basically. In the framework of the book, the reader is assumed to have lived through WWZ, and is now reading about other people’s stories. However, there is one pretty big fundamental problem with that: the shared history isn’t there. No one has lived through WWZ, so there are references to things that go like, “… and we all know what happened there,” but we don’t because no one knows what happened there! I’m sure this was a very specific decision by Brooks, but in my mind, it just created confusion and didn’t work.

Basically: if you really want to read this, go for it! It’s entertaining and I’m positive there is at least on chapter you will love. If you’re unsure, listen to the audiobook, or don’t read it at all. The audiobook is entertaining thanks to the cast, but you can find something better. Might I recommend Zone One by Pulitzer Prize winner Colson Whitehead, something from Stephen King’s Anthology, or Tell My Horse by Zora Neale Hurston.