World War Z - Max Brooks

Officially my favorite piece so far, World War Z hit a level of depth and character the previous stories fell short of. I had my reservations coming into the piece, not being a fan of war stories, or stories with too many POVs, but by the end I was blown away by the novel. The strong voices really distinguish this piece from all of the others. Each interview reveals a POV ripe with culture, philosophy, and diversity in every way imaginable. This gives readers the chance to view the apocalypse from angles all over the globe and human spectrum, from suburban mom, to international space station astronaut.

For my favorite part.                      

I was majorly impressed by Brooks’ ability to create well developed characters in a handful of pages. So many of the characters came alive from the get go, but for me, the truly incredible feat revolves around my favorite character. General Raj Singh was a larger than life hero, and this fantastic image of him was built without ever giving him his own POV. The square he had is men form to fight off a zombie swarm became world famous, and was mentioned by many POV characters. The moment one of his men had to knock him unconscious to get him to evacuate the lost battle was viewed from space via satellite. His final moments were brought to us through a third party POV character who witnessed him run off to detonate the charges that would avoid a nuclear strike when the remote failed. Through the thoughts, eyes and ears of other characters, whether right in front of the General’s face, or literally a world away, Raj Singh was brought to life in a way that will stick with me even after many of the POV characters fade. This was one of my favorite parts of the novel, and really shows the power of characterization.

Now, about the zombies. The monsters in World War Z were an unstoppable plague that tore apart the planet. Science and technology were dreadfully underprepared for a disaster of this magnitude, and so were the social structures of every country. The book said it best, but to summarize, what made Zack so effective for me was that the monster’s destructive powers weren’t an inherent thing the creature possessed, but rather the exact way they combined with the faults of humanity. Another race, a better race, one more sophisticated, ethical, and united would never have succumbed to Zack the way humans did. The zombie is humanity turned against itself, both in the literal sense (zombies were people) and in the metaphorical sense (much of the devastation in World War Z came from people not getting along and doing things like launching nukes at each other.) I appreciate this poetic symmetry.

Another thing that really hit the spot with this work, was that it did the exact opposite of what many previous works earned my nerd rage for. World War Z acknowledged the scientific faults in it, and it made it more believable. Characters bring up both the fact that Zach somehow doesn’t rot in sea water, and the miraculous survival of the zombie’s brain tissue even after being frozen and thawed.  This made my nerd heart feel so warm. Thank you. Thank you for acknowledging the fact that science exists and should work, but doesn’t and no one knows why. That’s all I ever wanted.

The only thing I really found at fault with this piece is the lack of clarity in naming the different POV characters. The interviews are titled by location, and in many cases, the narrator’s opening narration leaves out the name of who he is interviewing. Though the voices were so strong I could usually tell when a repeat POV came up, it would have been nice to have the names readily available at the beginning of the POVs. Especially when you have to write a blog post. I don’t know the name of the Air force woman with the imaginary sky watcher “Mets” off the top of my head. And there are wonderful characters I can only refer to as Astronaut Man, Dog Man, and Resorted to Cannibalism Girl without pouring through the pages. They sound like bad superheroes.

But overall, World War Z has become a personal favorite.