Quick Book Reviews

Some books I never got round to review, but read so long ago I can't remember the details to write a longer review about them



Hell Fire (Corine Solomon #2) by Ann Aguirre
A very nice read, but I totally read this series out of order, and the later books are so much better. Still I really recommend this series.

Ill Wind (Weather Warden #1) by Rachel Caine
A really cool read. I love Caine's writing and world building. I have other books in this series in my TBR pile, and really should read them soon.

Where the Deep Ones Are by Kenneth Hite and Andy Hopp
A fun Lovecraftian parody of Where The Wild Things Are. Recommended to anyone who is familiar with Lovecraft's work, and especially The Shadow Over Innsmouth

The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks
A must have for all fans of zombie apocalypse stories. This book will tell you how to survive!

World War Z - DNF Review

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
by Max Brooks

What is it about:
The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.

Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve-year-old Patient Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plan provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable price, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally started to turn, this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War.

What did I think of it:
I didn't finish this book, but put it away about half way through.

It's not because of the story:
The story is really cool and believable. Brooks did a great job in describing how people would react when the zombie apocalypse would be upon us. It's realistic, gritty, grim and the zombies are the proper kind of zombies in my opinion.

It was the writing that really started to bug me.

Each chapter of this book is narrated by someone else. It's set up as if one person went to talk with survivors of World War Z and wrote down their oral accounts. And that's were it went wrong for me: All narrators sounded the same. Whether it was a military commander, a civilian or a doctor: they all had the same narrative voice. This resulted in all those different stories blending together. At one point I couldn't remember if I had already reached a new narrator or not.

So that's why I decided to put this book aside.

I might try picking it up again one day to finish it, because, as I said, the story is really cool and I am curious how it will end. But for now I do not have the patience for it.

Why should you read it:
It's a very realistic take on the zombie apocalypse.