The zombie apocalypse is a pervasive element in our modern culture thanks to a few luminaries and extremely popular shows (both George A. Romero and The Walking Dead respectively). However, many interpretations of the zombie plague have come and gone, but some have stayed more relevant and engaging.

Today on the blog we are going to talk about one of these excellent texts titled World War Z. I am going to summarize the plot, provide the blurb and a few reviews, and then give my overall impressions of the text.

Summary

World War Z was written by Max Brooks, and it tells the tale of an outbreak that spreads from China and goes worldwide into a full pandemic. The government fails to contain the virus and through various narratives, the reader learns how the zombie apocalypse struggle started and ended and what strategies were put into place to tackle such issues.

Book Blurb

From Amazon: The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of 30 million souls, to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet.

He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.

Reviews

On Goodreads, the novel has 529,542 ratings and 29,901 reviews. There are 204,516 five-star reviews and 11,827 one-star reviews.

Five-star reviews highlight the originality the novel brings to the table through its use of interviews and “quasi-historical” accounts. Moreover, the “quality” of the book was noted as was “the “amazing amount of detail.”

One-star reviews address the narrator as an “idiot journalist.” Additionally, reviewers highlight that the writing is just “ok” and that it lacks a “protagonist or a central story.”

Impressions

I am on the verge of purchasing House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, and that also has a diverging narrative style that plays with conventions. I am very interested in World War Z, but might leave it until the fall with some of my other necessary reads (Needful Things being one of them).