World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War in Pick-a-Shelf

Jan 18, 2008 Joanna rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobooks, post-apocalyptic, bookish-2011-winter, 2011-read, rws-2011-spring

The full cast audio performance is a terrific way to experience this book. I wish they'd gone ahead and made the unabridged version. I enjoyed the audio enough to track down a paper copy to read the accounts that weren't included in the audio version. In particular, they skipped an account of a child who had become "feral" and an account of the K-9 forces that I thought were pretty interesting.

I'm no zombie officionado, so I can't really comment about whether this book is or is not a good additi ...more

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Oct 15, 2013 Joanie rated it really liked it

Shelves: audio-book, bookclub, south-shore-readers, 2013

I enjoyed this until the end but then it got a bit tiresome. It was really interesting to read about the progression of the zombie virus and how it became so widespread. It seemed so real and so plausible that I sort of forgot that there are no such thing as zombies (knock in wood, you can never be too careful!) It was definitely disturbing and troubling and it stressed me out but for the most part, it was pretty well done.

The unabridged audio was fantastic. There are different actors voicing ea ...more

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Mar 07, 2011 Joanna rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy-sci-fi, post-apocalyptic, bookish-2011-winter, 2011-read, rws-2011-spring

I listened to the abridged audiobook first, then wanted to see what I'd missed, so went through the paperback to read the episodes that weren't included in the audio version. But having the voices of some of the readers from the audio in my mind as I read definitely helped hold the story together for me. I'm very glad to have read the missing pieces as the audio omitted some great "histories," including the K-9 forces, a Japanese internet-head, and a "feral" child.

I don't think I've ever read an ...more

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Mar 09, 2010 Sunflower rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-read-2010

This book purports to be an oral history of a World War against an enemy that can't be "shocked and awed". In this case zombies, but the zombies are a metaphor for whatever; the use of the phrase "patient zero" reminds us that it could be anything we haven't encountered before. Because of that, the methods that we (humans) have used previously are not going to work against this new enemy, and one of the interesting things about this book is the way that the victory is achieved in various countri ...more

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Aug 25, 2013 Rebekah rated it liked it

Shelves: genre-war, genre-fantasy, genre-book-club, genre-science-fiction, genre-science-fiction-dystopia, genre-horror, genre-science-fiction-fantasy, genre-apocalyptic-post-apocalyptic, genre-science-fiction-apocalyptic, genre-horror-zombies

This is not so much a zombie book or a horror book, but rather a commentary on human nature during trying times. Many of the problems addressed in the book are not caused by the zombies, but by our current military-industrial complex and ongoing political conflicts. So...the real monsters in this book turn out not to be the zombies...but...wait for it...the humans! (GASP!) (I know, this is hard-core literary analysis here, huh?)

The writing format is unique, it is written very realistically like ...more

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Apr 28, 2014 Harold Ogle rated it really liked it

Shelves: contemporary, ensemble, lg-library, horror, undead, military, disaster, apocalypse

This is one of the better disaster novels I've read in a long time. In fact, it is this novel's resemblance to Robinson Crusoe, the prototype of all disaster novels, that is the greatest aspect of World War Z. The conceit that sets it apart from other disaster novels like The Stand, Lucifer's Hammer, or The Rift is that this is an oral history compiled after the fact by the survivors. So there is none of the tension of whether the characters will survive - you know because you're reading the sto This is one of the better disaster novels I've read in a long time. In fact, it is this novel's resemblance to Robinson Crusoe, the prototype of all disaster novels, that is the greatest aspect of World War Z. The conceit that sets it apart from other disaster novels like The Stand, Lucifer's Hammer, or The Rift is that this is an oral history compiled after the fact by the survivors. So there is none of the tension of whether the characters will survive - you know because you're reading the story that they did survive - it's simply an engrossing journey finding out how they survived. In essence, World War Z is a collection of short stories - each one detailing a different way that people at first survived and, in some of them, conquered a plague of undead.

The book is set up as a series of interviews conducted by a war correspondent hired by the United Nations to create a comprehensive factual history of "what happened during the war" as told by significant figures in the worldwide conflict. The factual report is not included - the novel is the compilation of notes and interviews the journalist gathered as background material for the report, over the course of the decade after "VA" (Victory America) day. This conceit sets up an interesting situation that is unusual in the apocalyptic genre, because it requires that global infrastructure remain intact. The journalist has to travel all over the world to interview dozens of people in dozens of countries, and that requires that global transportation and all the industries that support that remain largely intact or restored after the war. So in that sense, it is an unusually cheery apocalypse novel, and a stark contrast to things like Y: the Last Man, with which it otherwise has some common elements (astronauts stuck in orbit, for one).

(view spoiler)[The implication is that the zombie apocalypse started as an ancient Chinese curse, uncovered by culturally-insensitive flooding of river valleys that destroyed temples containing Things Best Left Alone. The plague is effectively viral, transmitted into the bloodstream by bites, other punctures, or, most disastrously, through operations. An infected person may have several days without showing signs of infection, during which he can move an interact normally (also potentially infecting others), but then the virus overcomes him, his health quickly deteriorates, and, on death, the body reanimates as a George Romero zombie: a shambling animate corpse that hungers for flesh to devour which can only be stopped by destroying the remnants of the brain.

It is at this point that I should mention that the film of the same name has nothing to do with the novel. That is apparent from the very beginning of the film, in which zombies are shown in the first couple of minutes as exactly opposite of how they are portrayed in the novel. This has no bearing on the novel, but I have to say I was disappointed with the film because it doesn't present ANY of the survivors' stories from the novel. Serves me right - one is always disappointed to see a film AFTER reading the book.

Back to the novel: the communist Chinese government fails to acknowledge the threat when it first appears, and so infected end up being distributed all over the world through air travel and, more damningly, through transport of organs for transplants. Hospitals and clinics all over the world are suddenly sources of outbreaks, and the plague spreads outward from medical facilities all over the planet. Most of the rest of the book involves accounts of the spread of the zombie hordes, as well as measures different countries took to contain and protect uninfected survivors. At least two thirds of the world's population is lost to the zombies before the tide turns and humanity begins exterminating the plague carriers (two hundred million zombies in the United States, with the US as one of the least destroyed nations in the world. Iceland is repeatedly referenced as the most destroyed, with fully 100% loss of human life).

Like most disaster stories, World War Z presents us a pastiche of stories, blending both the sacrificial nobility and horrible savagery of which humanity is capable. People are shown to be clever and stupid, brutal and kind, compassionate and heartless. (hide spoiler)]

While I really liked the conceit, it did limit the book in some respects. Most obviously, the tension of who would survive and who wouldn't is absent. The first-person narrative wears me out a little after three hundred pages; as generally a fan of disaster novels, I like to see some third person narrative so that characters I come to enjoy are seen to interact with each other. But the narrative conceit here doesn't allow for character interaction at all. So stories are vaguely related to one another at best. Finally, the idea that the author was able to travel all over the world to these dozens of countries stretches credulity a great deal, but the idea that he was able to find all these people to get their stories is even less believable!

For the most part, I didn't dwell on these issues. They're all drawbacks to the central conceit of the novel, and that conceit - interviews with survivors - was refreshingly different enough that I could mostly overlook the problems it presented. I really enjoyed this book. ...more

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Mar 01, 2013 Rachel N. rated it liked it

Not exactly what I was expecting. The book is really like a series of short stories instead of one unified narrative. It's presented as a series of interviews a UN investigator is doing into the Zombie War. The book covers the beginning of the zombie outbreak through to the end of the war though there are still zombies in certain areas. I liked the detail given to the whole war and believability the author gave to the story. I didn't like the constantly shifting between people. I wanted to know ...more

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Jan 19, 2011 Luann rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: gr-author, 2012, science-fiction, adult, zombies

While I was reading this, I found it hard to believe that it wasn't real! The level of detail here is incredible. Reading this actually feels like reading accounts of an actual, real event - even though your brain knows very well it isn't. It is quite creepy to read such a realistic and not at all sensationalized account of a zombie war. And yet for some reason I really enjoyed reading this. Well done, Max Brooks! 4.5 stars. ...more

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