World War Z

I attempted to read Monster Island, but found it difficult to read (original website didn't work, but the other site was hard to read for me because of characters appearing wrong and no spacing between paragraphs). So I gave up on that and decided to read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies which I already owned and had not yet read. I liked Pride and Prejudice when I read it in high school, so adding zombies makes one awesome version. Still, though I like the book, it was taking me a while to read. I only got maybe sixty or  seventy pages in.

So then I decided to read James' copy of World War Z by Max Brooks because I thought I could read it faster (which I did; finished the book in two or three days). The book painted a very realistic picture of what would happen to the world if there was an outbreak of zombies. Unlike your typical zombie movie which follows the one or two lone survivors, this book addresses real and practical questions - how would it start? How would governments react? Different cultures? How would people survive? Also unlike movies which usually only start at the beginning of the outbreak and end abruptly, the book follows years and gives a picture of the war's end.

The book is also told in a documentary style, going from person to person for individual interviews and giving a wide spectrum of views into what happened in this "zombie war". I think how Max Brooks did it was the perfect way for his story - it adds to his already realistic image of the story, making it feel more like nonfiction and making it more engaging. By not having all the answers as well, such as what happened to North Korea or how exactly the disease is able to operate, both adds to the realism as well as interest. You only know as much as the people whom the event happened to do. The people are very realistic as well, each have individual experiences and personalities. How they react to events and feel psychologically about them also seems real. There was clearly lots of careful thought put into every detail of the story, from the people to the events, and the event details.

I can't really find any fault to the telling of his tale; it is a perfect, realistic portrayal of what would happen to the world if there truly was a zombie outbreak. I enjoyed reading World War Z and I think I would consider it one of my favorite zombie tales, right next to Zombieland, which was a great and hilarious movie.