SPOILERS
This was an awesome book. I have to say this is one of the BEST books I have ever read. Intensely engaging from start to finish, it chronicles the individual accounts of vastly diverse peoples as they describe their experiences during the zombie war. Unlike the movie, the UN investigator compiles the stories of these people and narrates them to you. The book is not about the UN investigator (who is actually still working for the UN, unlike in the movie).
This engrossing books takes you across the world describing events from the USA to china as it details the start of the plague, how fast it spreads and the horrors endured by soldiers and civilians alike as the zombie sickness devastates the world, killing loved ones, destroying homes and otherwise bringing a near total end to the world. It's complete and total mayhem from start to finish! A MUST read for anyone who is a fan of zombies.
Unlike in the movie, this book follows a host of interesting characters, soldiers in Russia who find their faith among the chaos, the villagers in China who are attacked by one of their own, the American citizens stranded in the cold and forced to do unspeakable things to survive, a soldier on her own in the wilderness fighting fear and exhaustion as she attempts to regain her mission. And the shady characters like the crooked politicians who allowed the people to believe in a placebo even as they knew all of them would die. And the black market organ donors who may have sold more than organs.
A much more heartfelt tale than the movie, the book takes you on a twisted and winding journey that really makes you feel as if you could see the whole world while it's burning in hell fire. It's not just the journey of one man, but the life and death struggle of people in every corner of the world. It's a book with plenty of action more, actually, than the movie with terrifying battles and long struggles against fields of corpses often leading to the demise of whole battalions of men. But the story is about more than just the action. I found myself engaged in the characters, hoping against hope that they would triumph against the hordes of undead and the corruption of those in whom they trusted their lives.
Once you pick this book up, you will not want to put it down. Max Brooks is one of the best writers I have read, on par with Stephen King, but with more attention to action in his books.
On that note, it might also be worth your while to check out another of Max Brooks' books
called The Zombie Survival Guide. Also an excellent read and the perfect compliment to World War Z.
Please, do yourself a favor,
read this book. You won't
regret it, especially if you
love the undead.
Now, don't get the idea that I didn't like the movie at all, I did. It was actually, in my opinion, one of the best zombie movies I watched in a while. I must admit, part of the reason I went to see it was because I was intensely curious to see Brad Pitt in an action/horror role. The closest I've seen him in a role like this was back in The 12 Monkeys, But that was just a minor role (although it was a great role, one of my favorites of Brad Pitt. And the movie was one of the best I've ever seen as well) and it didn't have him directing the movie to boot. So, I thought I would check it out. And, quite frankly, it was a very entertaining movie. It wasn't much like the book, but then a lot of that is because of time and budget issues, and the fact that most people would lose interest if the movie attempted to follow the story-by-story line that the book did. This movie had a lot of action and the sequence in the airfield with the soldiers felt a little rushed, but altogether it was fun.
It did kind of skimp on the foreplay, though. It kind of just started off in the apocalypse, one minute we're talking about how awesome dad used to be over breakfast, and the next, we're being chased by freaks who want to kill us, and then everyone's panicking. They could have drawn it out more. Like in the book, when it was just passed off as a few crazy people attacking others, then it's ok, the government has it under control. Then, it's still ok, just stay calm and take this 'vaccine' then Oh my God! They fucked us! What are we going to do!?
Not to mention, the whole plot of the movie revolved around Brad Pitt's character, which meant that it lacked a lot of the detail. And the zombies in the book were actually of the more traditional undead, not the virus infected people in the movie. The movie kind of replaced zombies with the infected from 28 Days Later. Fortunately, the movie didn't suffer much from this as that was also a very good movie, and the infected where much scarier in a way because a very fast zombie is a lot harder to get away from. But, in the movie, they're safe on the water, while in the book, not even the sea was safe, because the zombies floated in the water, and would attack any prey they could, even latching on to boats!
Also, the movie centered solely around the effort to save humanity. So it wasn't anywhere near as realistic as the book, which showed the actual efforts of individual doing whatever they had to to survive, as well as the Redeker Plan which used those humans viewed as less useful as bait in an effort to draw zombies to certain areas so that those deemed most valuable could survive.
I kind of liked the way he found out a way to vaccinate against it, this didn't happen in the book, as that was a new concept that I never heard of, that zombies could be warded away from humans much less that they were purposely trying to infect the world and that they would avoid anyone already dying. That was an interesting idea. But, in short, the movie focused too much on the heroic efforts of Gerry Lane and not actually on the day-to-day struggle of the zombie war. But, they have to entertain the audience. And the movie was entertaining with some very jump-worthy moments. So, good ahead, grab some popcorn, turn off the lights one stormy night and enjoy. Preferably with a friend.
Check it out on Amazon.
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