All my regulars will know that I'm a strong proponent of preparation when it comes to the impending zombie apocalypse. This seems natural to me, but I know that there are those of you out there who scoff at me. They will be devoured. It's a shame, but that's how the whole survival-of-the-fittest thing works.
Anyway, it seems that the The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead would be a shoe in for me. To be honest, it was a mixed bag. It's not that it's written poorly. It's just, well, kind of long.
Basically, the book takes the premise that zombies have existed for thousands of years, caused by a virus that kills it's host, and then takes over the entire nervous system, leaving a dead, but mobile, individual that goes about eating people. Then, it tells you how to kill them, evade them, etc.
The writing itself is well done. Not once does Brooks (son of one my personal heros, Mel Brooks) break character. The entire thing reads like a paranoid, cold war era preparation guide. The fact that it's based on something false is never eluded to in the least. He covers everything that could be considered: weapons (in which he totally vindicated my opinion that an ax wins over a chainsaw), environment, and long term planning in the event of a world wide outbreak.
The thing is, its detail is what does it in. What I really want to see is one of those old school filmstrips where the sound is funny talking about all of it. You know the ones. The announce guy would come on and say something like, "Uh oh. Looks like little Billy has a zombie outbreak in the neighborhood.", and then goes on to tell little Billy how to help his family protect themselves. I think that's what the book was going for, but got lost in the sometimes excessive thought that went into it.
Don't get me wrong - the detail is impressive. It's just a lot to read frankly. When he starts covering historical outbreaks in the last third or so of the book, it picks up, but the preceding text gets to be too much.
On the bright side, this book led to his more serious, and much better World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, which I can whole heartedly recommend. Unless you're a big fan of zombie movies and games, which obviously I am, I can't really recommend this one for reading. At the same time, if I saw it in a bargain bin, I would pick it up to keep around as a conversation piece. So go read World War Z, a much more accessible and frankly better written book, and leave this one to the fans.
1 comment:
In all fairness, it wasn't meant to be read all the way through. This is bathroom fodder, meant to be read in short (wait for it) spurts.
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