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

I don't know if this book counts as a novel. The only thru-character is a fiction oral history archivist working for the UN, and he deliberately keeps his own contributions to this collection of interviews to the absolute minimum.

So far (I'm on page 230 of 339), the author doesn't have all that much to say about zombies, but he has an enormous amount to say about governments, their relationships to the citizens, and how they respond to threats and crisis.

The research that went into this book is mind-blowing. The interviews are collected from people on all continents, and I get the impression that the research that might provide a credible cultural context and setting for an entire novel went into the preparation of a single 5 page vignette. One after another after another.

And it has zombies.

I hope to re-read this book. I think that about most of the enjoyable books that I read, but it almost never happens. I think there is a higher possibility with this book than with most.

Frakking incredible!