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Post by AnteBellum8 on May 26, 2008 18:48:52 GMT -5
Has anyone read World War Z or Zombie Survival Guide?
I've read WWZ and throughly enjoyed it, but I haven't read the Zombie Survival Guide. Should I check it out?
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Post by shaggyrand on May 26, 2008 18:55:17 GMT -5
Depends... its okay, its literally what you think it is. A zombie version of the Worst Case Scenario Survival Guide. I couldn't really get into WWZ. Its wasn't bad but he tried way too hard to cram as many different genre parodies as possible. I actually preferred the audio version. The narrators in the book didn't really stand out individually for the most part. There were several plot holes that annoyed me or some of the explanations for things didn't make sense to me (I haven't read it in awhile so I can't give exact examples).
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Post by AnteBellum8 on May 26, 2008 19:00:12 GMT -5
That is one thing about WWZ that I didn't like: It was really hard to keep track of the characters/scenarios. The audio version is probably a lot easier to follow.
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Post by shaggyrand on May 26, 2008 19:07:29 GMT -5
Yeah, because its done with a full cast. The audio is great (it has some of the sections removed... which I really think the book could have used). There was just too much for a single volume... and most of the sections went much longer than I think they should have. I didn't hate it, but I really don't get the gushing love that I see for it.
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Post by Gilligan West on May 26, 2008 21:22:11 GMT -5
I really enjoyed World War Z. I found the scope of the book to be engrossing and memorable.
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eswtg
Horror Fiend
Posts: 79
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Post by eswtg on Jun 3, 2008 9:32:39 GMT -5
I'm a big WWZ fan, I can appreciate it didnt work as a full flowing novel but I think its decision to bring together different view points made it very very good indeed and managed to get across the scale of the apocolypse. The variation, the thought out effects and different scenarios all worked well IMO and kept the scary horror element throughout. Not a normal novel but a great Zombie read!!
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Post by Gilligan West on Jun 3, 2008 17:30:51 GMT -5
I love stories where "facts" and witnesses are strung together side by side. It worked for Carrie, and I think it worked well here.
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eswtg
Horror Fiend
Posts: 79
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Post by eswtg on Jun 4, 2008 3:12:55 GMT -5
I liked the seperate chapters, a novel where one person survives thorugh it all and has a list of amazing things happen to them is unrealistic and the premise (for this and most zombie world ideas) is a "realistic" imagining of the apocolypse. Its happening everywhere to everyone. taking accounts from a host of different viewpoints gives scale and keeps it more unsettling and also allows the author to show the depths of his creation, one character would only have a small perspective on the whole thing.
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Post by shaggyrand on Jun 5, 2008 23:24:16 GMT -5
I liked the seperate chapters, a novel where one person survives thorugh it all and has a list of amazing things happen to them is unrealistic and the premise (for this and most zombie world ideas) is a "realistic" imagining of the apocolypse. Its happening everywhere to everyone. taking accounts from a host of different viewpoints gives scale and keeps it more unsettling and also allows the author to show the depths of his creation, one character would only have a small perspective on the whole thing. I'm agree that multiple narrators work for that type of book, but there were too many in WWZ. Many books have done it better, and while it wasn't bad I think it gets way more love than it deserves. Also the constant change of character works against this type of book because you don't care who lives or dies. There's nothing at all unsettling about any set up where the audience doesn't care (which is one of my problems with many movies as well). There's no suspense, there's no true horror in what happens if I as the audience can't bring myself to care about what happens to the characters. To be honest its lazy and inexcusable. Again multiple narrators good... so many that it drive you to the point of indifference bad. There's a middle ground, and if he'd reached it the book would have been great, as it is it's an overlong author wank.
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eswtg
Horror Fiend
Posts: 79
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Post by eswtg on Jun 6, 2008 3:25:53 GMT -5
I see your point but I found the description frightening not because of any feelings towards individual characters but due to the grandscale scenario. In real terms I feel frightened/scared when reading accounts of war without needing to know the depths of characters of any of the victims. I agree its far from a wonderful example of literature or deep creative writting skill but I found it demonstrated a lot of what I find interesting and scary/entertaining about the zombie apocolypse style genre, such as the scale and the considerations of everyday implications and social reactions to the extreme situtaions.
i havent really read any other zombie books but I've heard about a series called "Autumn"..... anybody read it, have any opinons on it.
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Post by trentsketch on Jun 20, 2008 18:07:27 GMT -5
I loved WWZ. The structure of the book did create some problems because all the individual narrators weren't as distinct as they could have been. Being a total nerd, I really got into the historical analysis angle (that was very well executed) and the international flavor. Funny side note: My local library has it shelved under non-fiction. I've talked to three separate librarians and they can't grasp the fact that it's not some cryptic text about WWII experiments or, with one of them, a book about an actual zombie war she just never heard of. You would think they'd take the hint from every other library in the county calling it fiction...
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