Review of World War Z by Max Brooks

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This is not a novel, but a series of short stories told in the first person by people interviewed by a reporter ten years after the ten-year zombie war.

Zombies, War, taking place all over the world? What's not to like?

Well, some people will love it. It was a #1 New York Times bestseller, so plenty of people did. They made a movie out of it (which I never saw).

As for me, I'm not a fan.

What this has going for it is the writing is excellent. The author's breadth and depth of military knowledge is impressive, but to me it's just boring and tedious, especially having to look at footnotes to understand the military jargon.

I like novels with character development and a great long story. This just doesn't have this at all. Not that it tries to. I suppose it's good for what it is, but I didn't care for it.

I compare it to The Martian. Man, I was really bored by all the sciency stuff (and I have an Engineering background!), it was way over the top. But The Martian had a great story, so I really liked it. This has a hundred of them, all too short.

There are, though, a couple of real gems in here (the one about the female paratrooper trying to survive comes to mind), but overall, I had to slog through it, and it put a serious wrench in my quest to read 48 books in 2018.



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