World War Z - Max Brooks

World War Z takes a different angle on Zombie stories.  Rather than tell us the story through narration, Brooks organizes the events as a series of accounts as told by the people who lived through them.  It is unique, and for this reason I was really looking forward to reading it.  After all, I'm a big fan of using diary entries and first hand accounts in fiction.  And who better to hear about a zombie war from than the people who lived through it.

Unfortunately this gimmick is really all World War Z had going for it for me.  And like most gimmicks, it ran thin pretty quickly.  Because the "interviews" are all separate individuals, there is no main character.  No characters at all in the traditional sense.  We are given a brief intro, that person shares an account, and then we move on.  There is no one to root for.  No one to care about.  No one to be concerned for.  Even within the mini stories we can't become too concerned, because obviously they lived through it.

Don't get me wrong, there is some poignant stuff in there.  The story of the Russian soldier describing the "decimation" of her unit was very well done.  But in every tale that starts to nudge some emotion, there is the fact that you know the person lived, and you know you will never see this character again.

Then there are the parts that just made me shake my head.  Now I'm not huge on zombies as a villain regardless.  They just aren't scary.  Especially slow, stumbling, moaning ones too stupid to open a door or unbuckle a seat belt.  I mean really at that point the only real danger is starvation.  The villain might as well be a blizzard.  The effect is the same.  But certain parts of this book just made it obvious Brooks couldn't think of reasonable ways to make this threat really threatening.

Take the initial spread.  Somehow, with internet and social media (yes this was released in '06 but social media was well on its way even then) with email and the 24 hour bored out of their brains news cycle, this zombie plague manages to spread across the world with virtually no one knowing or caring.  Until it's too late of course.  The CDC, US government, and general populous go insane over a few cases of bird flu but zombies?  Meh.  This was obviously a construct Brooks created to ensure there could actually be a story.  And don't even get me started on the chapter detailing how hard it was for someone to make propaganda films.  Really?  Like every government in the world wouldn't be jumping all over propaganda films?  Cause they've never done that before during... I don't know...  WW2?

And then there's the "Battle of Yonkers".  For all his research into what weapons we have, Brooks obviously doesn't think much of the military.  Now I'm not saying the military doesn't do some dumb stuff, I was in it, I know.  But when it comes to actually prosecuting a straight up fight.  They know exactly what they're doing.  Seriously, by then they would obviously know they needed to blow brains out.  And no one does that better than snipers.  Lots and lots of snipers.  With lots of ammo.  That's a no-brainer. (pun intended)  All of the things the interviewee mentions as having been done wrong, were exactly the obvious things the military would do.  But then, if the military was competent, there wouldn't be much of a book either.

In the end, though, it was the repetitive nature of the interviews and the lack of anything to really engage me that killed this book for me.  If Brooks really wanted an epic world spanning zombie war, I think he would have been better served with something closer to Red Storm Rising meets Outbreak.  With characters we can get to know and care about and a threat that is more logically a threat without needing to throw common sense out the window.  Now that book would be epic.