World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
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World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥ |
Great Subject, Poor Book
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Like most readers, I'm a zombie fan. I went into it with fairly low expectations, figuring one takes what one can get from zombie fiction, but even those were disappointed.
The "oral history" layout with the story divided into short vignettes seemed like an interesting approach, but fell down in practice. The voice of the stories did not change much from one to the next, with a few exceptions, which came off as overblown and unbelievable. Instead, each story just sounded like Max Brooks. I frequently found myself flipping back to the beginning of the story to see who I was supposedly listening to.
The "interviews" read like standard first-person fiction, if slightly more casual. Combined with the failure to effectively change voice, the style of the book felt like a crutch. This made the lack of a continuous storyline frustrating, as it didn't really offer any value in its place.
Brooks is at his worst when he gets political. Characters are portrayed either as selfless heroes or caricatures taking positions that only their most naive opponents would ascribe to them. The attempt comes off as ham-handed and ignorant.
The inclusion of serious themes (if childishly presented) made it hard to overlook other errors or implausibilities in the book. For example, the US West Coast as a safe zone in a plague that began in China, a gross misrepresentation of the effects of artillery on a standing-room-only crowd, and Chinese lamenting the (more famous in the West) Cultural Revolution rather than the Great Leap Forward, which killed 10-100 times as many people.
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World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War Books In Print, Audio Books.