This is one of those, “I heard the book was better than the movie” choices. I don’t remember the movie very clearly, so I thought it would be a good time to read the book.
There are a lot of good stories here – mainly about the survivors of a zombie apocalypse. The stories are told by the survivors in a sort of interview/Q&A style, and told in the past tense as the Zombie War has already been won.
Because the storytelling style is unique it lends a certain amount of realism. Lots of characters use lingo that was created during the war, with the author providing footnotes to explain them. Often the interviewees will treat information they give out as common knowledge (which of course it is not for the reader) and the methods that the writer has to employ to overcome this gap didn’t feel very graceful to me.
In the end the format of the book caused more problems than it was worth. I’d have liked to hear some of these stories told in the first person as they happened, but I suppose that once the author committed to this format they had to follow through.
So a so-so zombie book, but not as interesting as I had hoped.
Next I am re-reading Timeline by Michael Crichton.
