Book Review: The Zombie Survival guide
Another finished book about zombies, The Zombie Survival Guide (from Max Brooks). It was written before World War Z so I have been able to compare things on both books in inverse order (I've readed first WWZ).
This book tries to be a "serious" guide to defend yourself from zombies. As simple as it sounds :D
It is sometimes funny, and has a bit of black humour on it, but mostly tries to be as serious and applied as possible.
It gives all sort of advices, from how to defend your home to how to establish a contingency plan, how to "attack" and raid zombie-infested zones, tactics, and some historical zombie attacks (backgrounds for the supposed guide ;)
So basically we can say the book is 85% a manual of "how to live fighting zombies on a daily basis" and 15% a collection of zombie short-stories themed in the past.
The guide is really well documented, so much that a movie director wanting to do a zombie movie could use this guide as a manual of "how to make a zombie movie". Some tactis explained are funny but clever ones.
Some of the stories are really well thought and even scarier than the future depicted in World War Z (the one of the slaves ship is my favourite), and look like the seed that Brooks planted for WWZ (or maybe was a "playground" to see how well could he tell small zombie tales?).
If you enjoyed World War Z, or just like zombie movies, go grab this book before the apocalypse comes!
Book Review: World War Z
Few weeks ago I finished reading World War Z, by Max Brooks.
Being a zombie films addict, I must say I was predisposed to enjoy the book, but it has been a real surprise...
The book is a compedium of small stories, told 10 years after World War III, aka World War Z because it was not fought between humans, but between humanity and a world-scale zombie plague. With this curious but not nobel-winning plot you could expect anything, and the results are amazingly good.
Brooks has taken a "realistic" approach, explaining as much as possible (taking into account we're talking about zombies ;) of the science of the plague, how it spreads around the world, how different countries, governments and cultures react to it, how each of the survivors is able to tell his/her history, etcetera.
I really like the approach. You never get tired of a history you don't like because they are at most 10 pages long. In fact, sometimes you end with the desire of knowing more of particular histories or survivors, more about what happened.
We have all sort of histories, from frozen zombies in the northen part of the globe, to military mistakes that end with heavy decimation of the US forces, doctors, rich and powerful people...
The author touches a lot of cliches, from typical zombie movies ones, adaptations of "I Am Legend" (even the military call some survivors LMoE, Last Man on Earth, for their surviving skills), interesting (and some very clever) tactics to detect and avoid zombies (using trained dogs, placing tape on the perimeters of the bases so that if a tape is broken a zombie is inside,...).
I enjoyed a lot the scientific approach to how to survive a global zombie plague, how would each government reach, what would happen if you were in the coast, in a city, in a small village, in the jungle, in a boat... Even how you could try to make money from the situation.
Really a lot of situations and themes have been cleverly though and depicted in the short stories.
The book hooks you until you finish it. It felt a bit short for my personal taste, and the finale was a bit too typical (very... "patriotic").
Definetly a recommendation for reading as soon as possible ;)
Got at last all Drizzt Do'Urden books
Finally I've boughtall Forgotten Realms books I had pending to complete my "DrizztDo'Urden collection" (one of my favourite characters in all AD&Duniverse).
My collection now has:
Also, as I love the Drow race, I've got all but the last of War of the Spider Queen books. I'll check if there's more books with drow histories and probably get them too :)
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