World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War ~ Max Brooks
★★★★☆
Ignorance was the enemy. Lies and superstition, misinformation, disinformation. Sometimes, no information at all. Ignorance killed billions of people. Ignorance caused the Zombie War.
World War Z is absolutely nothing like the movie, I'll tell you that. Even the type of zombies was different (they're fast zombies in the movie, which does bring its own horror element, but they're slow zombies in the book for a reason that's central to the conflict and its resolution). The biggest difference was the turning point of the war, the catalyst of human victory. In the movie, it was a plot twist, a non-human element. In the book, it's human endurance. It was raw and emotional and very, very real. Suffice it to say that the book is way better than the movie.
The monsters that rose from the dead, they are nothing compared to the ones we carry in our hearts.
This book is very comprehensive, almost boring at parts because of it, but undeniably exciting and meaningful likewise. It has something for everyone (except for fluffy romance lovers, I suppose). It goes very in-depth with the war aspects, listing war jargon, guns, as many abbreviations as possible, but without feeling too technical. It had unsettling implications and subtle consequences that I would never have thought of. It really felt real and truly frightening because of that. For anyone who is confused about the format of this book, it is stylized like a nonfiction history book told in specialized interviews with survivors, the interviewer being a meta Max Brooks. It's like the mockumentary version of a book. I really enjoyed it. It left me feeling both terrified and hopeful, along with the survivors in the book. The atmosphere was extremely palpable.
For the first time in history, we faced an enemy that was actively waging total war. They had no limits of endurance. They would never negotiate, never surrender. They would fight until the very end because, unlike us, every single one of them, every second of every day, was devoted to consuming all life on Earth. That's the kind of enemy that was waiting for us beyond the Rockies. That's the kind of war we had to fight.
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