Written as a series of interviews, World War Z by Max Brooks, dubbed An Oral History of the Zombie War, tells the story of humanity’s fight against the living dead. There has been a lot of hype around this book, and critics have loved it. Even horror fans have been singing its praises from some of the blogs I’ve read. Am I the lone wolf in thinking it’s not all that and a bag of chips?I think it’s passably decent, but I don’t really understand why people seem to be gaga over this book. It’s aimed a little more for the upper echelons of the literati; those who would stare down their noses at Brian Keene’s The Rising or Joe McKinney’s Dead City, two books which I think are much better, if not more engaging and entertaining, than WWZ. I really had to force myself to finish this book. It was not very difficult for me to set aside World War Z.

 As I said, it’s a series of interviews with people from all different ranks and files of society from the world over. Some of them have interesting stories to tell. Some of them don’t. I didn’t really care about any of the characters. I didn’t really get to know any of them long enough to care about them. Here’s an interview, here’s another, and another, and another. At certain points the melodrama seemed way over the top, and the character of the director who made the inspirational films Victory of Avalon or whatever…yeah, I hated that guy. I mean like really hated. His scenes, his “interviews” and few others, they just didn’t click for me.

For me, Romero’s Diary of the Dead did what this book intended to do, and Romero not only did it better, but he made it work. World War Z may make a better movie than it does a book. We’ll have to just wait and see.

2.5 out of 5

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