World War Z is actually something that I read last summer.
At the time, I felt too embarrassed to actually review it, after all it is a
dime-a-dozen zombie thriller with a depressing cast of stereotyped characters
and little common sense. The most awkward part? I actually liked it back then.
In order to determine if it was only a passing craze brought on by living in
Vancouver (and oh I miss that place) or actually a decent piece of fiction, I
decided to give it another go.
This time the feelings were not so favourable, but overall
World War Z is not bad. The author’s vision for a zombie apocalypse is enticing
and draws on so many aspects of the global, modern society that it feels (to
the degree that a silly zombie book can) plausible. Nations act like they just
might in the event of a real conflict. Israel quarantines itself, China denies
everything and the USA fails to see the pattern until it is too late. The tales
draw heavily on modern political action, which does give the tale some much
needed heft.
However, there is no getting around the fact that the
overall premise is utter baloney. So many times, I had to skip over a section
that felt ridiculous or skim through a chapter that I remembered from last
summer. Nothing here is worth reading twice, unless you are once again bored on
your summer vacation. There just isn’t that much thematic depth to warrant a
reread.
But as I said before, it is in no way a bad effort. World
War Z is the only zombie book that I will ever read, and I imagine most of the
others to be at least somewhat inferior to this one. World War Z is a
comprehensive, imaginative take on what would happen if the dead reanimated and
started craving living tissue to eat. For me, however, the “if” in the previous
sentence is just too big an obstacle to ever find this book reasonable.