Zombie Brain Addiction
(Actually, a review of Max Brooks’ novel World War Z)
Zombies: BRRAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIINS!!!
Humans: We must escape with our lives!
In The Walking Dead, the king of all zombie media properties, it’s a little more developed and intelligent:
Zombies: BRRAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIINS!!!
Humans: We must escape with our lives! And also, not lose our humanity in the process!
So it’s hard to top TWD (Did you play the walking dead video game by TellTale? What an awesome game. Best game in recent memory) In World War Z, Max Brooks manages to avoid repeating too much of the now-cliched zombie story by taking a different approach: writing this book like a documentary about a war between humans and zombies (which was totally lost in translation to the movie).
The good: The premise and execution. The Zombie brain addiction documentary-style narration is clever (if not a bit gimmicky) and manages to make this story rise above the typical zombie survival story. This way, we get to see a zombie survival story on a global scale, not just a few pretty teenagers trying to escape a shopping mall full of brain-eaters. Also, given that this could have become boring very fast, since it had no protagonist, story arc, plot twists, or climax, I was surprised that the book held my attention through the end.
The less good: There’s little to criticize here, so what I’ll say is nitpicky: I wanted more. Early on, there is a chapter about how a civil war started in Israel because the government decided to let in Muslim refugees trying to escape their zombie-infested counties in the Middle East.
Yes! This is exactly the kind of interesting apoca-political stuff I want to read about. Instead, those plot points are few and far between. It’s mostly stories about zombie survival. Not as good. Can I criticize a book because I wanted it to go one way and it didn’t? Of course I can. Don’t tell me what to do.
So if you like Zombie brain addiction and docu-dramas (huge crossover demographic), you’ll like World War Z. I very much enjoyed it!