Axiom's Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy

A Zombie novel by Max Brooks

Reviewed by Sam Christopher

Rating: 5 out of Stars (Highest Rating)

I’ve never made any bones about my love for zombie fiction. I love the movies, mainly the Romero style but I can deal with virtually any set of parameters for the dead rising, ever since I snuck into a theater to see the original Dawn of the Dead. Then, years later, I ran across the paperback for Dawn of the Dead in a comics store I frequented. I never bought it but over the course of a couple weeks I read the whole thing, and would even read it again later. Then one day I came in and the book was gone and I found myself wishing I’d bought it. Within a week, though, I had found the novelization for the original Night of the Living Dead at another book store. I flipped through this one but didn’t have the money to buy it right then. When I came back a few days later it was gone. I then went for years without seeing any kind of zombie prose. I’m sure it was out there but I just didn’t see it for whatever reason. In the last few years, though, horror and fantasy aimed at the zombie-loving audience has skyrocketed. There are many, many anthologies filled with “walking dead” fiction, novels—some good, some not so good—published that might never have found an audience without an organization like Amazon.com to reach its market on a large scale. These are things that years ago would likely have been relegated to the comics and oddball shops run by someone who happened to love the genre, and nowhere else.

Thus, the genre might never have attracted someone with the talent and background of Max Brooks. Brooks, son of comedy great Mel Brooks and actress Anne Bancroft, worked as a writer for Saturday Night Live in the early 2000s. He has also appeared as an actor, from what I gather, on various shows in bit parts, and as a voice actor on episodes of Batman Beyond and Justice League (both of which I’ve watched, but never really paid attention to the actors on them). His first book, The Zombie Survival Guide, is an excellent resource for anyone trying to survive a zombie holocaust (my first rule is: always keep at least half a tank of gas in your car) and also gives a little of the history of zombie outbreaks and attacks on humanity through the ages. I’m guessing Brooks, like me, has always had a fascination with this sub-genre, and so he might have written these books anyway, but one can never know. I do know that having a family to feed can sometimes make decisions for you. Irrespective of that, there is a market for these books now and he did write them.

So let’s talk about World War Z now. This is the story of a man sent by the UN to interview various people around the world on their perspective of the latest zombie outbreak; one that very nearly ended Man’s dominance of the planet. In The Zombie Survival Guide, we were shown various zombie outbreaks from history but these were always shown to be sporadic and, while dangerous locally, never really a threat to Humanity as a whole. This book is different. Even though it is being shown to us in flashback, through the memories of those who have survived it, and we know the war is supposedly over, one never really knows where they stand in the world Brooks has created. They think they’ve beaten the Dead back and ended the threat, but then they’ve always thought that before. The book is almost entirely presented in the voices of those who fought first-hand, and gives a truly diverse account of the war from various perspectives and through the lens of different experience. Some of the interviewees are clinical and detached, some are more obviously affected—all are shown to have been marked by the events. Brooks does an excellent job of imbuing these characters with their own personalities, their own mannerisms, and does so in a very believable manner. The reader is really drawn into the story and sometimes we even feel as though we are interviewing the survivors.

For those who haven’t read this book, read it; if you have read it, read it again. One last thing, too: I’ve heard rumor for the last couple of years that this was being made into a motion picture, usually said to be on option to Brad Pitt’s studio with Joe Straczynski having already written the script. No idea. I hear that on occasion but I never see anything being done with it. I know I’d love to see it. But I guess we’ll just have to wait and see on it.

Read John J. Joex’s Review of the Audiobook Version

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