world war z – max brooks

World War Z - Max Brooks

I thought that World War Z was absolutely fantastic – and by far the best that I have read so far this year (you can see the list of books I’ve read since late Jan here).

I bought this originally for The Man, and he loved it.  Now, I am not a love of all things war (don’t like war films or books – which is odd because I like gangster-type stuff, so it’s not the pointless killing that I’m against) but The Man said that he actually thought I might enjoy it, so to give it a go.

I am SO glad that I did.  It’s an extraordinary book, and very well thought out.

Instead of having your usual storyline ‘…this happened, and then this happened, and then this was a circumstance…’ etc etc, it’s written as a series of interviews with individual survivors across the globe of a war by man with zombies.  The war raged for 10 years, and victory against the zombies has now been called internationally.

Some of the interviews are with general Joe public, some with experts, some with military and they are placed in rough chronological order to give the reader an idea of how the war started, people’s reaction to it, how they lived while it was raging and how it was eventually won.

A brilliant way to tell the story, as it gave Max Brooks a chance to continually change style in a way that ensures the reader doesn’t become bored as each section is just a few pages long.

And I think that everyone will find that they have a favourite ‘voice’ – The Man loved the blind Japanese ‘gardener’ whereas I was quite taken with both the Japanese misfit and the American airwoman.

I would thoroughly recommend this to anyone.  It has a very ‘real’ feel to it that is unnerving at times – so much research must have been put into this, and so much thought as to how each nation would deal with such a devastating event.  I loved it!!

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