World War Z
World War Z by Max Brooks is a gruesome book that leads you on an adventure throughout a futuristic world filled with zombies. It sends chills down your spine as the story unfolds from one horrific event to the next, and is told from the first person perspective of individuals who survived the zombie outbreak. This action thriller of a book is bound to keep you reading and holds your attention as you connect with each character. In this gut wrenching story, Max Brooks brings you through the lives of the troubled survivors of the Zombie apocalypse, from trained soldiers to children who grew up during the outbreak. This interview style format serves to give the reader more of a human perspective on the pandemic and the horrors that they witnessed. World War Z is filled with gory stories that keep you guessing throughout the whole book, each more violent in nature; yet you find yourself begging for more.
Max Brooks, the New York City born author of the bestselling World War Z and The Zombie Survival Guide, holds a particular interest in the zombie genre and subculture. Recently, when questioned why zombies have become so mainstream in popular media, Brook’s responds on his web site that zombies “reflect our very real anxieties of these crazy times. A zombie story gives people a fictional lens to see the real problems of the world.” Referring to real global and economic hardships such as the war in the Middle East, poverty and famine, he lets the reader know that you “can deal with” these issues as “long as the catalyst for all of them is zombies, you can still sleep.” In other words, reading about zombies provides us an escape from the harsh realities that we face in today’s society. Recently, with all the hype of the book, movie producers have hopped on the opportunity to create this zombie apocalyptic book into a movie soon to be released in 2013.
In World War Z, the US has been replaced by China as the world’s super power: ”After centuries of foreign oppression, exploitation, and humiliation, we were finally reclaiming our rightful place as humanity’s middle kingdom…it was the dawn of what the world was finally acknowledging as The Chinese Century.” This new world, as first described in Brook’s novel, is set in the future, and focuses on the first encounters with the infected, or zombies. Since, the novel is written as an interview, one can infer that the zombie pandemic is over, and that the war has been won. The first interview recounts the experiences of a veteran doctor. The doctor tells of his first sighting of the zombie outbreak in a place called New Dachang. The doctor received a call to go and check out this disease that a small boy acquired while “Moon Fishing” or diving for heirlooms. The boy was a resident of the town New Dachang, and was code named patient zero. This is where six other patients contracted the disease trying to contain this boy. `There, the doctor observed the boy. This boy had no emotion or pain, no feelings or perception of reality, only the instinct that everything and everyone is a meal. This is where the outbreak started. This is where the government tried to cover the outbreak. This was the start of World War Z.
This book is not an ordinary zombie novel. It is unique, grisly, and designed to entertain, horrify and captivate your inner Bear Grylls. I highly recommend this book and hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did.