World War Z (Max Brooks)

World War Z. I wanted to love this story, I really did.
Zombie stories aren’t so much about the reanimated corpses as they are about politics and people. That is what makes them so good. Unfortunately you only have one of the two elements here.
A good political bent will make the relationships between the villain and the hero states vague- you can never be absolutely certain which countries they are talking about and can transcend the generations to fit the current political climate at the time of reading.
That is definitely not what you get here. What you get is a blow by blow of political relationships across the world, the enemies that are the enemies now. This means that, apart from feeling a lot like you are being hit over the head with a hefty high school text, it is soon quickly going to go out of date. In ten years it will be a period novel.
It also fails to pull you in with its characters. Sure, the idea that it is a political report is a good one, only it fails to give you a relationship with any of the characters. There is no one to care about, no actual storyline to follow. Every voice is the same, the whiney voice of the author. If this was in fact an investigation then the interview somehow managed to find people who all sounded exactly the same.
There is nothing new or original here. Even the human plight is so drearily drawn that it’s hard to really care or even picture it outside of the many zombie films or books that have come before.
And it moves terribly slowly. Slowly. So much for the human factor. Not that he has anything nice to say about people anyway. It is simple enough to skip entire chapters in order to speed up the reading without actually missing out on anything important.

And as a side note, because I can’t pull any actual evidence to support my argument, or can’t be bothered, I just wanted to say that I’m feeling some deep rooted racism coming from Brooks.
If I had to say one good thing about this book, other than the fact that the concept is interesting (even if poorly executed) I would say this- the Afrikaner plan, though abhorrent, was a clever touch. A truly horrible solution meant, I assume, to show you who you are by how you react to it.
My absolute favourite bit? The very last four words, dedication at the end- I love you, Mom.
I preferred Cell to this.

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