Catriona Setliffe's Reviews > World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

The good: Zombies!

The bad: The "oral reports from a large cast of characters" conceit mostly serves to show Brooks' limitations as a writer. All of the characters have the same voice, which is bursting with machismo and absolutely rife with bigotry, smug moral superiority, and the most crudely-caricatured cultural stereotypes: Yes, Americans are all dumbasses who believe anything the advertising industry tells us and only care about shallow entertainment and staying safe in our ignorant little shells. It's so true. I'm not even going to start with the many, many, many insulting references to people from what are described as "barbaric" cultures. I could look past this - hey, maybe surviving the Zombie Apocalypse forced people to toughen up, all in the exact same way - except for the fact that ultimately, it's a pretty boring book. There are only so many times one can read that the zombies killed a lot of people and it's all humanity's fault for being soft and complacent before it gets really dull. Even a pinch of background into HOW the zombies came into being would have helped, but I guess Brooks felt that that would have taken away from the whole faux war journalism vibe. Meh, whatever.