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3.91 AVERAGE
3.91 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
reflective
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
dark
hopeful
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book is much better than I expected. I love the amount of detail in the world building and how past events (even some still standing political issues) really shape the way the different world nations react to the outbreak and how they either become allies against this new existential threat, or hold onto old grudges despite the imperative to unify. The cast of characters in this books are truly diverse, offering many different angles to the apocalypse at hand. I also appreciate the patient buildup to when all hell breaks loose.
Overall this is one of the more insightful pieces of zombie media I have come into contact with over the years and was well worth the money.
Overall this is one of the more insightful pieces of zombie media I have come into contact with over the years and was well worth the money.
challenging
informative
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I really enjoyed this! It's a very interesting way to approach zombies, because the retrospective, sort-of-epistolary structure pretty much removes the tension and terror usually derived from an undead menace. (It's a stark constant to the movie, which, and I think I've seen Max Brooks say this, seems like a totally different story.) Instead of waiting to see who will survive and who will have to slaughter their recently zombified lover/child/goldfish, the whole thing is carried instead by a sort of how-to sensibility, picking up people from a impressively wide world, and asking, what would this person do if there were hordes of Zombies intent on eating brains?
It's a fascinating question at an individual level, which is what we get with a lot of zombie and end-of-the-world stories. What's interesting here is watching it play out on a national and international level. Brooks digs up characters who live through the apocalypse and instead of harrowing tales of near-bites, they talk about war profiteering, social media, government policy, and social engineering. They tell fascinating quasi-ghost stories about entire nations disappearing underground. My only quibble about this is that although the characters come from an impressively varied set of backgrounds, most of the time they *sound* very similar. Few emerge as distinct characters in their own right--most are only notable for contributing a fascinating piece of zombie-survival trivia. This wouldn't be noticeable in other formats, but stands out when a 20 something from Minnesota reads almost identically to a blind warrior monk/gardener from Japan.
Having said I very much enjoyed it, I did struggle with the description of the US military's disastrous early encounters with Zombies, not because I can't believe such an encounter might be disastrous, but because it's hard to figure it being a disaster in exactly that way. Maybe this is progressional pride, saying the Army I'm part of isn't quite that stupid and inflexible: it's true the Army loves its doctrine, but even when this was written in 2006, fighting the last war means an Army ready to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, not to throw the Russians back across the Fulda Gap. I'm not sure that counterinsurgency would work any better against zombies than what's presented here, but I'd like to think it wouldn't go down like this.
It's a fascinating question at an individual level, which is what we get with a lot of zombie and end-of-the-world stories. What's interesting here is watching it play out on a national and international level. Brooks digs up characters who live through the apocalypse and instead of harrowing tales of near-bites, they talk about war profiteering, social media, government policy, and social engineering. They tell fascinating quasi-ghost stories about entire nations disappearing underground. My only quibble about this is that although the characters come from an impressively varied set of backgrounds, most of the time they *sound* very similar. Few emerge as distinct characters in their own right--most are only notable for contributing a fascinating piece of zombie-survival trivia. This wouldn't be noticeable in other formats, but stands out when a 20 something from Minnesota reads almost identically to a blind warrior monk/gardener from Japan.
Having said I very much enjoyed it, I did struggle with the description of the US military's disastrous early encounters with Zombies, not because I can't believe such an encounter might be disastrous, but because it's hard to figure it being a disaster in exactly that way. Maybe this is progressional pride, saying the Army I'm part of isn't quite that stupid and inflexible: it's true the Army loves its doctrine, but even when this was written in 2006, fighting the last war means an Army ready to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, not to throw the Russians back across the Fulda Gap. I'm not sure that counterinsurgency would work any better against zombies than what's presented here, but I'd like to think it wouldn't go down like this.
Audio booked this one and it was fantastic. The movie did this book no justice.
medium-paced
I was expecting more of a first person story, but it was a series of interviews. I felt like I was reading a documentary and could not get invested in the story. I can see why people like it but it’s not for me.
Oh geez this was a great read that I finished in two breathless sittings. It's an oral history of a fictional zombie war that almost destroyed humanity, and it will terrify you. Interviews with everyone from military officials to religious leaders gives the whole book a Studs Terkel kind of authenticity. Scary as hell because the reaction to the zombies is so credible.
I'd seen the movie, and kept reading/hearing the sentiment that it wasn't like the book at all. And now I know well why people keep saying that!
The movie follows a single person's experience through an epidemic. This book is a collection of first person accounts through-out the entire world, by a huge variety of different people. As I was reading it, I thought the sheer amount of research that went into this book is STAGGERING.
The author had to figure out the strengths and weaknesses for each country, based on factors like military power,access to weapons, natural and man-made defenses, population, resources, and history of previous warfare or pestilence. Then, come up with a plan on how each country might respond and defend itself if there was a zombie attack. And finally predict how each country would try to rebuild, post-war.
If you've seen the movie, some of the differences are in the spoilers.
-So a huuuuge difference was in the book, no cure is discovered, everyone has to band together to kill off the infected.
-There are also undersea swarms of zombies who were thrown off boats, or boats filled with infected that were capsized.
-The infected can get frozen and incapacitated in below freezing weather, only to reanimate during the thaw.
- There are "Quislings" who are people that go crazy and think they are zombies. And it confuses a lot of scientists who study the zombies because it appears that zombies are fighting each other, or that certain drugs or vaccines are working when someone is bitten, because they think they survived a zombie bite, but really it's a faux-zombie bite.
Books like this are so hard for me to rate. But truly it's a 5 star book, the writing done here is genius level. It's amazing that one human's brain could create all of this.
While at the same time, it's not really a book that would ever be my favorite, because I really missed the first person narrative. I wanted something that was a little more then just interview after interview to connect with. I think it's good to know this ahead before reading the book, so you can prepare your expectations, that you will not have a primary narrator.
The movie follows a single person's experience through an epidemic. This book is a collection of first person accounts through-out the entire world, by a huge variety of different people. As I was reading it, I thought the sheer amount of research that went into this book is STAGGERING.
The author had to figure out the strengths and weaknesses for each country, based on factors like military power,access to weapons, natural and man-made defenses, population, resources, and history of previous warfare or pestilence. Then, come up with a plan on how each country might respond and defend itself if there was a zombie attack. And finally predict how each country would try to rebuild, post-war.
If you've seen the movie, some of the differences are in the spoilers.
Spoiler
As I said, the movie follows Brad Pitt, who discovers patient zero, both in the book and the movie, there's not a lot of info about how this happens. In the book a boy get's bitten by something underwater. But as to the "what" I'm guessing a really, really ancient zombie that was buried? The movie then follows how he and his family survive getting out of the city, and later how he works on finding a cure.-So a huuuuge difference was in the book, no cure is discovered, everyone has to band together to kill off the infected.
-There are also undersea swarms of zombies who were thrown off boats, or boats filled with infected that were capsized.
-The infected can get frozen and incapacitated in below freezing weather, only to reanimate during the thaw.
- There are "Quislings" who are people that go crazy and think they are zombies. And it confuses a lot of scientists who study the zombies because it appears that zombies are fighting each other, or that certain drugs or vaccines are working when someone is bitten, because they think they survived a zombie bite, but really it's a faux-zombie bite.
Books like this are so hard for me to rate. But truly it's a 5 star book, the writing done here is genius level. It's amazing that one human's brain could create all of this.
While at the same time, it's not really a book that would ever be my favorite, because I really missed the first person narrative. I wanted something that was a little more then just interview after interview to connect with. I think it's good to know this ahead before reading the book, so you can prepare your expectations, that you will not have a primary narrator.