World War Z review

4/5: It can't be fiction. All the details, every thing, they're too realistic, too plausible.

AUTHOUR(S):

• Maximillian Michael Brooks

RELEASE: 2006-09-12

Premise: Taken from the book:

"It goes by many names: "The Crisis," "The Dark Years," "The Walking Plague, as well as newer and more "hip" titles such as "World War Z." This record of the greatest conflict in human history owes its genesis to a much smaller, much more personal conflict between me and the chairperson of the United Nation's Postwar Commussion Report. ...[I]t came as a shock when I found almost half of [my] work deleted from the report's final edition. ...[I]sn't the human factor what connects us so deeply to the past?

Although this is primarily a book of memories, it includes many of the details, technological, social, economic, and so on, found in the original Commission Report, as they are related to the stories of those voices featured in these pages. This is their book, not mine, and I have tried to maintain as invisible a presence as possible. Those questions included in the text are only there to illustrate those that might have been posed by readers. I have attempted to reserve judgment, or commentary of any kind, and if there is a human factor that should be removed, let it be my own."

Overall: Gore. It's not a huge part of this book in any way. But any one, even the most extreme of gore hounds, can surely enjoy this book. All the interwoven stories have been stitched and sowed exquisitely. All the characters are believable, all scenarios and accounts staged masterfully, and all flows gratefully. Perhaps the most glaring flaw in the book is that of the description of a certain woman who purportedly has the mind of a girl of "fourteen" years. I sincerely hope that was a typo' and that Brooks meant "four," as fourteen-year-old girls act nothing like described in the book. Aside from that, the only thing that keeps this from being a five is that the book isn't as riveting as I, and perhaps most others, would hope for it to be. Very, very, intriguing and a real hook, but it just needs more energy.