After seeing the movie, I downloaded WW Z as an audio book.
The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of 30 million souls, to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet.
He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. …
Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the 12-year-old Patient Zero … this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War….
Pretty good. Any zombie fan would enjoy this story.
I’m glad I got it as an audio book.
Martin Scorsese, F. Murray Abraham, Rob Reiner, Henry Rollins, Mark Hamill and many, many more voices were used.
In her review of the audiobook for Strange Horizons, Siobhan Carroll called the story “gripping” and found the listening experience evocative of Orson Welles’s famous narration of The War of the Worlds. Carroll had mixed opinions on the voice acting, commending it as “solid and understated, mercifully free of “special effects” and “scenery chewing” overall, but lamenting what she perceived as undue cheeriness on the part of Max Brooks and inauthenticity in the Chinese accent of Steve Park.
Publishers Weekly also criticized Brooks’ narration, but found that the rest of the “all-star cast; deliver their parts with such fervor and intensity that listeners cannot help but empathize with these characters”. In an article in Slate concerning the mistakes producers make on publishing audiobooks, Nate DiMeo used World War Z as an example of dramatizations whose full casts contributed to making them “great listens” …
The author has stated that the Brad Pitt film has nothing in common with the story other than the title. He’s mostly correct. Yet the movie is inspired by the books.
I enjoyed both.
Rick McCharles 