World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

There are things that WWZ does well and others it does not so well.

The book is an incredible global overview of a zombie pandemic from start to finish via witness accounts from all over the world, with incredible amounts of historical, geographical, scientific and technical details and suppositions, covering every possible angle of the initial zombie invasion, to the ultimate attempt to reclaim the earth.

Breathtaking in scope and very thought-provoking, how would you survive in such a situation?

"Fear is the most valuable commodity in the universe."

Fear is maybe not the most valuable commodity, but certainly one of the most prevalent for stopping you in your tracks.

Entertaining in small bursts, WWZ tells its tale as hundreds of bitesize vignettes to paint a bigger picture.

That level of scope and imagination deserves four stars because it rarely stagnates through constantly updating viewpoints and incredible ideas as an ode to fighting to the end no matter what.

"But I knew it, leaning there with my face against the glass, looking at this monument to how easy it was to give up."

However, WWZ is no thriller, more like an encyclopedic report of every possible A-Z zombie related eventuality.

Divided into various sections: threat, invasion, being overrun, sitting back, and finally fighting back, there's loads of continuity from a scientific perspective, from a retrospective historical point of view, as if a zombie apocalypse actually took place, but from a storyteller point of view with personal ties and people that you root for and learn to love, the book is strangely empty and, dare I say it, boringly unfulfilling.

There's no character development or anyone to identify with because of how it jumps to the next eyewitness account under one of the broad zombie invasion timelines, instead of telling things from a continuous human identifier perspective, as a polar opposite to fenced-in settings with incredible depth of character, which is more satisfying to read.

WWZ deserves plaudits for tackling a zombie apocalypse scenario in such detail, but because it's so sprawling and outlandish - even ridiculous at times - already feels technically out of date while also forgetting the importance of individuals and communities to identify with.

As to the movie? I've seen it and have no idea how scriptwriters took the zillions of ideas and crafted a explosion of visual entertainment over a couple of hours, which has got very little to do with a book that should have been called World War A to Z(ombie).