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77 of 84 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Dawn of the Dead" meets "An Inconvenient Truth", September 30, 2006
Other reviewers are correct that Brooks approaches the problem posed by a zombie issue as a problem to be solved within the structure of modern global politics. In my opinion, the approach of focusing on the response to the zombie plague is more sophisticated and more timely than making an allegory of the zombies themselves.
It was Romero who took the voodoo myth of the reanimated corpse and popularized an idea of the zombie as a vessel for a communicable plague. He identified a fundamental anxiety and created new monster in response to modern anxieties. However, his use of the zombies as a critique of consumer culture isn't as fresh an observation as it might have been in the 70s, which is the most pertinent criticism of the recent "Dawn of the Dead" remake.
To the modern audience, the idea of zombies carries undercurrents of AIDS, biological warfare, and terrorism, and Brooks is one of the first to recognize and tap into that in an intelligent way. He's taken a specialized, genre subject and elevated it here to something that is literary. And while there will certainly be some who will be disappointed not to find the pages filled with endless descriptions of severed limbs and smashed brains, Brooks lays on enough of the biological details to keep the subject from becoming abstract, while keeping his focus aimed on something more significant.
As Brooks envisions it, the zombie plague encompasses the threat of terrorism and global war, natural catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina or the devastating tsunami, and global disease scares like avian flu and SARS.
There are two outcomes of a story about a zombie plague; either it consumes and annihilates humanity, or it is contained by the organized action of something like a government. As a domestic political parable, Brooks doesn't throw any hard punches. He envisions America triumphing over the zombies under a national unity government of both parties, with Colin Powell and Howard Dean as president and vice president respectively.
Powell and Dean are not named but are clearly identified, with Dean providing a narrative, in which he is identified as a "whacko" retired to Burlington, Vermont. He makes allusion to his rising political star and subsequent "meltdown," and mentions the president's military training and Jamaican relatives.
I also think some readers may have misinterpreted the narratives about Israel. As I understood Brooks's narrative, in his "near future" Israel had unilaterally withdrawn from the West Bank behind a security barrier and the Palestinians had declared statehood in the territories. Brooks sees Israel as being the first nation to directly address the zombie outbreak by declaring a national quarantine, effectively made possible by the much-criticized barriers. Certainly Brooks's imagining of these events has a political undercurrent, but I'd see it as a center-right
While early in the book, a showy exertion of American military technology proves useless against the inexorable tide of the undead, but later on, it is the American military that adapts and develops the techniques to defeat the zombies.
Some may find it politically offensive that Brooks approaches the zombies as a problem simultaneously emerging globally, and paints the response to the problem from the perspective of people from various countries. However, the approach to emerging problems like communicable disease, terrorism and climate change as global has been broadly accepted by all but the most polar extremes of the politcal spectrum.
Several of the ideas are legitimately controversial. Brooks envisions Russia organizing as a sort of neo-Tsarist theocracy, and China pushing back the zombie tide only after a civil war which removes its establishment. Nuclear exchange occurs between Iran and Pakistan, emerging from a dispute over refugees from the plague, and Brooks explains this from the perspective of an Iranian diplomat who wryly suggests that traditional enemies have the diplomatic mechanisms necessary to prevent nuclear war, while traditional allies would not be able to communicate in a dispute growing from a crisis.
The policy, implemented globally, which saves humanity is also disturbing, and Brooks treats it as such. Formulated by a calculating, almost sociopathic former policy-maker from apartheid South Africa, the plan calls for the abandonment of large swaths of the uninfected population to serve as bait to distract the zombies, while the military establishment and necessary personnel retreated to and secured defensible "safe zones."
Perhaps Brooks's most radical position is the notion that the trappings of modern society must be abandoned in this kind of crisis. Professionals from the modern American service economy are re-trained by their former plumbers and housekeepers to perform the kind of tasks necessary in the wake of the zombie induced economic crash.
The military abandons its high-tech weaponry and communications mechanisms in favor of single-shot rifles, revolutionary-era firing formations, highly trained dogs, and multipurpose shovels called Lobotomizers that can be used like axes to decapitate zombies. In Europe, refugees ride out the zombie plague by holing up in old castles and fighting off the undead with medieval weapons pilfered from museums. A brilliant Indian general fights off the zombies by positioning his soldiers in a square formation reminiscent of the ancient Greek phalanx.
Ultimately, Brooks, whose previous book explored a similar theme and managed to achieve humor by taking the hypothetical problem extremely seriously, invites audiences to really treat the idea of zombies seriously by approaching them realistically, both as a military problem and a political crisis.
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177 of 204 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
What an amazing book!, September 13, 2006
Like several other reviewers, I read and enjoyed Max Brooks' 'Zombie Survival Guide', but I was skeptical as to whether he could strike gold twice in a row. Much to my satisfaction, the answer was yes.
World War Z isn't so much a novel as it is a collection of very personal recollections of people who have lived through - literally - hell on earth. In a way, it reminded me of news footage of these walls you see where, during a civil war, or natural disaster, people go and leave notes for loved ones, hoping someone, anyone, will see them. Every time I see something like that, it strikes me as hopeless and desperate, but at the same time noble and uplifting. In short, what makes us human. This book gave me the same reaction. I preordered it from Amazon, received it this morning, and finished it about an hour ago. I wish I'd rationed it out a bit, because I didn't want that feeling to end - the feeling of reading the accounts of some of the bravest souls who (n)ever walked the earth.
The only other book I've read that comes close to this in 'feel' is Warday, by Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka. But even that is too one-sided; the authors' own opinions and views are clearly dominant. In World War Z, each individual vignette is unique and special; from Tibetan smugglers to dirigible pilots to ex-politicians, each 'interview' has its own distinct voice.
In closing, I'd just like to say that while George Romero may be the father of the 'zombie genre', Max Brooks may well exceed him. Blasphemy? Nope. Just my opinion. One that is hopefully shared by millions of others.
PS: Here's hoping they don't butcher it when they make the movie! :D
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97 of 111 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Like a good Romero zombie movie, but better!, January 16, 2007
*** SPOILERS BELOW!!! ***
If you love zombie lit but are getting bored with viscera and nihilism, this is a great antidote. Brooks has taken his ironically deadpan "Zombie Survival Guide" and made a whole world out of it. Pretending to be an oral history of humanity's struggle against Romero style zombie hordes, this book has a cast of dozens, most of whom speak for only a few pages before yielding to other voices. As a result, we get a truly international view of the great crisis, and the situation and responses faced by people in a variety of settings.
Generally, this works and works well. Zombie fans will be delighted by the variety and unique sets of questions Brooks addresses - what would an armored company do to fight zombies? What happens to zombies in cold weather? What would happen in Korea and Cuba? Traditionalists will be happy at the slow mindless zombies, but they may perhaps miss all the visceral gore common to the genre, as Brooks does not get too messy. This is a fine choice, as if you want messy there are many, many zombie novels available that are based on anatomy texts, but few that manage to be this creative and panoramic.
Some have commented on Brooks' "leftist" politics. This complaint to me is a non-issue. Some US characters do state that disillusionment over Iraq left the US civilians and military incapable and sluggish to respond to the initial zombie plague, but this is not harped upon and the US military and populace do indeed bounce back soon enough. He also does have an Israel / Palestine solution result from the plague, but we see only very little of the end result, and the rockiness of the path towards a two nation solution is portrayed clearly (complete with an Israeli civil war). Brooks also has a clear Howard Dean stand-in become US President, but unless you are a Dittohead, this will probably be only a minor irritant.
More seriously, Brooks has been accused of an anti-military viewpoint and some Amazon reviewers accuse him of only showing "politically correct" characters in a heroic light, with white male soldiers and other authority figures being shown as inept or malevolent. This is an utter calumny, and some of the only narrators with multiple speaking roles are white male US Army soldiers. The Army's initial response was bumbled as shown, but the reasons for the tactical and strategic failures are clear and realistic and the military soon comes up with effective new strategies, which the soldiers heroically and intelligently implement. Many of the most heroic protagonists in these pages are soldiers of different nations, and the hard choices, psychological and physical suffering, and heroism of these characters comes through clearly and fairly.
The occasional statements about right wing militias seizing control of parts of the US and then not freely handing them back to the government are minor plot points and again are not inconceivable. Left wing citizens do not have the firepower or fortified compounds that some extreme right wing folks have, and the same guys that have bunkers and assault rifles stockpiled also are not very friendly to Big Government. Hardly an unrealistic scenario! And along the same lines, Brooks' solution to the zombie plague is very Big Government with centralized micro-management of resources, citizens, and strategy. This strikes me as again being not overly ideological, and also logical and realistic as many real world crises of large scale and complexity (especially in the 20th Century) were solved in the same way.
Finally to address another review complaint, the UN does take over the eventual wrap-up campaign against the zombies, but this is only after most nations have cleared their countries using their own troops under national sovereign command. The UN is only conducting campaigns in those parts of the world that have been too devastated to conduct their own campaigns or are too isolated or large for nation state operations. Again, not leftist so much as it is pragmatic and realistic.
Sorry to go into the "politics" of zombie wars so much here, but the unifying theme of most criticism of Brooks is that he is too left-wing. As I hope I've shown, I disagree with that assessment and most importantly these politics such as they are have no main bearing on the plot of quality of the book.
Finally, the best things about "World War Z" to me are the quality writing, the surprises of the plot and scenarios, and also the poignancy of the emotional impact. As stated above, the experiences of the combat soldiers are deep and moving, and other sections like the struggle of a pilot trapped behind "enemy lines" and best of all, the K-9 handler's tale are brilliantly done and add both pathos and innovation to portrayal of human experience during the Zombie Plague.
The only poorly done section of the book struck me as the Japan part, with a computer nerd hero who is literally glued to his PC until zombies break down the door. He fumbles his way to escape, discovers a katana, and becomes a samurai ginsu machine, slicing and dicing his way through undead hordes. Finally he meets a wise old sensei who also happens to be blind and an impressive master of zombie fu in his own right. The wise old guy helps the ex-nerd become a warrior monk and the two found an order of swordsmen to save Nippon... Other than a guest appearance by Godzilla and / or giant robots, there is little that could be added to this section to make it seem more cartoonish and cliched, perhaps a sign that Mr. Brooks is capable of wedging his tongue a bit too firmly into his cheek, to the point where his story-telling is impaired. But this is maybe 10 pages out of 400, and the good stuff far outweighs the bad.
All in all, I think this book is brilliant and highly recommend it. The innovation of Brooks's plotting is pared to an optimistic pragmatism that stands in stark contrast to the bleak nihilism of most zombie books. Human society and its components, humans, are ultimately shown to be resilient, intelligent, and even noble. The usual zombie books (c.f. Brian Keene's gore encrusted potboilers) usually show humans being as bad or worse than their ghoulish opponents, with human institutions like governments and armies collapsing into non-existence or brutal predation of ordinary civilians. Brooks dares to think differently and his book is a breath of fresh air.
Brooks gets the details right, tells a fine story, and makes the Zombie War seem very real. Zombie fans need to read this, and non-genre fans with some familiarity with the zombie plague concept will also probably enjoy this. No significant flaws, many many virtues!
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