Tim Brough's Black Leather Bookshelf

"What if the enemy can't be shocked and awed?"
4 Out Of 5 Stars

This review is from: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (Mass Market Paperback) Author Max Brooks almost pulls off a pretty neat trick in "World War Z." Borrowing liberally from George Romero and Studs Terkel, he casts himslef as the intrepid journalist traveling the globe in an effort to get first person histories from survivors of the great Zombie War that almost wipes out the human race. He sits down with the Chinese Doctor who was there when "patient zero" was discovered to the CIA agent that came to the realization to late that what the US thought was just crackdowns on Chinese dissidents was really cover-ups of the spreading plague. There's more than a little political allegory involved, with everyone from the president of the USA's Middle Eastern Policy to the state of relations in Iran, India and Pakistan.

Since most of the "interviews" are brief, the book keeps a good pace. Brooks wisely separates the book into segments; the beginning, the battles, the aftermath. The only, minor, flaw is that some of the interviews bleed together, as if Brooks forgot that all the characters might have different voices. This doesn't happen very often, but it is noticeable as the book goes on. However, "World War Z" is an inventive, novel take on the whole Zombie Horror genre as well as a darn good read.