If you are into violent stories about war and destruction—suspense-thrillers/horror—and you haven’t read World War Z, you may want to think about it.

I saw the film before I listened to the book and the two are as different as night is to day. The only thing in common is the struggle between humans and zombies that hunger for human flesh due to a virus worse than EBOLA, MARBURG, HANTAVIRUS, LASSA, RABIES, SMALLPOX, DENGUE, SARS or HIV will ever be. A few always survive exposure to these viruses but no one survives exposure to the Zombie Virus. Once bit, you are doomed.

The Zombie Virus is our worst nightmare.

I enjoyed the film but reading the book left me admiring the author’s creative and vividly detailed imagination as the main character moves around the world interviewing survivors of the global war against the infected, hunger driven zombies.

Although the story is told through these interviews, the individual stories are attention grabbing—some more than others.

A number of themes run through the novel: one points out how governments are often incompetent; corrupt and how many of the people panic and make disastrous mistakes as a mob. Another theme focuses on survivalist and disaster preparation.

I bought and listened to the audio book and the cast of characters is incredible. I found the listening experience to be more powerful than watching the film and possibly more powerful than reading the book on paper. The cast of characters is long and their talent adds to the novel.

If you have a fascination with war, I don’t see how you can resist this novel.  The stories shared in this oral history of World War Z are as violent as they get.  World War I and II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan cannot compete with the combat that you will witness as a reader/listener of this novel.  Imagine an enemy that can’t die unless you cut off its head or blow apart its brain.  And all it wants to do is chew on living humans infecting them. Viruses find ways to spread and replicate just as the Zombie Virus does in this novel.

I awarded this novel 5-stars on Amazon because of the amazing imagination of the author that never failed to impress me. If there were awards for imagination, Max Brooks deserves one. In fact, the audio book—that I highly recommend—won an Audie Award in 2007 for the performance of a cast of more than forty that includes, for example, Alan Alda, Mark Hamill, Carl Reiner, Bruce Boxleitner,  Rob Reiner, Jon Turturro, Masayori Oka [NBC’s Heroes], and Martin Scorsese [the award-winning film director].

I couldn’t find the complete edition Audio Book I bought of World War Z on Amazon. My copy had 10 compact discs running 12 hours, and I bought it at Costco.

Discover “The Hurt Locker” and IEDs in Vietnam

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

His latest novel is the award winning suspense-thriller Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was fighting for the other side.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper left-hand column and click on “FOLLOW!”