When
I was 12 years old, my cousin told me about this zombie action novel that he
wanted to buy. He said that he wanted to read it before watching the movie that
will be based on it. I wasn't into reading but I was intrigued so I also
started reading it. I didn't regret reading World War Z. It was a really
interesting read. It is a suspenseful story that talks about the experiences
and struggles of different people all around the world before, during, and
after the Zombie War.
Max
Brooks was well known for his novel World War Z, though it wasn't his first
book about zombies. The Zombie Survival Guide was published three years before.
It talks about the nature of the Solanum virus that spread all around the
world, hence World War Z. It seems to be a wordplay on the two world wars,
where the whole world was involved. Brooks' motivation were his parents, wife,
and son, whom he had dedicated the said two books.
It
is written as a compilation of interviews that gives off a diary-like vibe and
a more personal feel to the story, as if talking to another person. It was even
written in the introduction of the story that almost half of the interviews
were deleted because "it was all too intimate," "...too many
opinions, too many feelings..." The way it was written allows the reader to
experience the zombie war personally. "The fact that we couldn't shock and
awe Zack[zombies] boomeranged right back in our faces and actually allowed Zack
to shock and awe us! They're not afraid! No matter what we do, no matter how
many we kill, they will never, ever be afraid!" The story gives dark and
thrilling narratives that were amplified by first-person view of each
interviewee, which makes the whole story more real and haunting.
The book was well thought off and
thoroughly researched. There’s a story that happened in space. “We used the
"Jules Verne Three" ATV, the last supply pod launched before French
Guyana was overrun. It was originally designed as a one-way vehicle, to be
filled with trash after
depositing
its cargo, then sent back to Earth to burn up in the atmosphere.” Stories that
happened in China “She admitted that it had happened when the boy and his
father were "moon fishing," a term that describes diving for treasure
among the sunken ruins of the Three Gorges Reservoir.” Stories that involved military
weapons, “The beam was a weaponized version of solid-state, industrial lasers,
the kind used to cut steel in factories. It could either burn through a bomb's
outer casing or heat it to a point that detonated die explosive package.” All
the stories had those tiny details that added some sort of credibility and a
deeper immersion in each interview.
The
book also exposes some of the truths about humans the world, of which some were
very subtle. A placebo vaccine was introduced by some guy and made millions out
of it during the zombie war. “‘Fear’, he used to say, ‘fear is the most
valuable commodity in the universe. Turn on the TV. What are you seeing? People
selling their products? No. People selling the fear of you having to live
without their products.’” The government and medical professionals were all in
on it. It just shows how people are easily manipulated through mass media. In one
story, several families made a camp to help out each other. They were friendly
and all until they ran out of supplies. It shows how people treat people good
only when it suits them. Throughout the book, the individual’s will to survive
and to live was emphasized. A great example is when a pilot crashed in an
unfamiliar land survived through the help of someone who talked to her thru the
radio. It turned out that there was actually no one on the radio and it might
have been the pilot helping herself all along.
The book’s final chapter shows
how the interviewees were doing after the zombie war. It shows how they were
recovering and returning to their regular lives. “I've heard it said that the
Holocaust has no survivors, that even those who managed to remain technically alive
were so irreparably damaged, that their spirit, their soul, the person that
they were supposed to be, was gone forever. I'd like to think that's not true.
Bur if it is, then no one on Earth survived this war.” These goodbyes were
somehow supposed to give some closure to the interviewees’ stories, and they
did.
World War Z is a great book and
I’m glad that I read it. I’d read it again.
Comments
Post a Comment