johnson1010 wrote:What did you think was handled well, Nora?

What do you think might have been done better?

I commented elsewhere that the first time i read through the book i was a bit lost, sometimes, when he returned to a cheracter that had already been featured earlier. It sometimes took me a bit to realize, "OH! This is that guy who fought at Yonkers!" which changed the light in which i viewed the chapter.

You mention the recognition of the few repeated characters, yes, I agree with that. I've only read it once, and I'd bet I didn't catch every repeat. Brooks could have made more of an effort to write a few throw away lines that would refresh our memory as to where that character had been. OTOH, that may have taken away from the 'reporter-like' rhythm of the piece. If Brooks wanted to maintain the rhythm, some stuff would have to have gone by the wayside. And, to me, in the end, the connectivity didn't matter. In fact, now that I think about it I believe it generated more of a One World, One Heck of a Mess feeling. No one was given a break, no country, no set of people. There was no prejudice...........the zombies killed indiscriminately. Whatever got in their way.

I liked the "newspaper report" style of the episodes....for one thing it made the reader realize that this guy survived. No mean feat! But also it allowed for a more dispassionate view of the story. Something like that could easily have become mired in too much emotional moaning and groaning. This was clean, the reader provides their own emotional effect. And our own imagination is always the most potent for ourselves.

It's been a couple of months at least since I read it, so much detail has faded and left the general ambiance of the book.
The connection I most remember, at least partially, was the brother of the man killed/lost in the Paris underground. /shiver/ And of course North Korea. /more shivering/

Hi Nora, welcome to Booktalk, and thank you for sharing your thoughts on The Zombie Wars.

I think this is a great book, and I feel the flat deadpan reporting style adds to the intensity and the satire.

Max Brooks is the scion of the greatest American satirist and prophet Mel Brooks, of Get Smart and Blazing Saddles fame. Some one posted a link to Brooks pater singing in the history of the world, just brilliant.

I think you have caught some of Brooks fils intention with the lucky to be alive feeling, after most people have been chomped by undead monsters. What a creepy thought! Almost like allowing India to sell antibiotics over the counter to build a breed of superbugs that will collapse the human population pronto. No one could be that dumb. Or piling CO2 into the air until we get an earthshattering kaboom. Some other species might be stupid enough for that, but not us homo sapiens. Only the chosen elite survive the apocalypse, like the 144,000 with Christ on Mount Zion in Revelation 14.

Ahhh, well. Every generation has it's own "the sky is fallingggggggg" routine.

Alarmist notions come and go, cynicism sets in, and it's the same old, same old. 'Till next time, of course.