This book is so brilliant. Read it! This instant! Is that not enough? Do I need to write more? Must I pad this glowing endorsement over three paragraphs? Go on then.
I picked this up for two quite different reasons:
- I am a zombie nut, I love it all from Romero to The Walking Dead to Shaun of the Dead. I embrace zombies as a low-brow horror staple, an indictment of modern consumerism, and a commentary on the lack of individuality seen in modern western society
- Some of my mates worked on the Malta portion of the making of the film (apparently Brad is a very nice man).
Whatever your reasons for coming to this book, I promise you won’t be disappointed. This ‘oral history’ is tense, gory, heart-rending, scary and funny. The fictional compiler has travelled the post-zombie holocaust world, gathering the stories of soldiers, politicians, historians and ordinary citizens. It’s brilliantly written, with every ‘interviewee’ coming across as a believable person who has lived through unimaginable horror and loss, and survived to tell the tale.
I suppose my only criticism of the book lies within its narrative conceit. Because the contributors have all survived the massed ranks of the global undead, the sense of jeopardy and Armageddon that are so central to Romero and Darabont’s work are lacking. However, none of that matters when you’re in the grips of a tale about the fall of Tokyo, or the use of canine units in winning back USA from the zombie hordes.
Did I mention that this book is brilliant and that you should read it?
Cannonball Read V 