Review - The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks
I love zombie-stuff so much my girlfriend has developed an automatic eye-rolling-'tch!' response just from hearing the word. I could confidently defend my home, place of work and favourite coffee shop from undead assault. A while back an editor couldn't run my Zombie Emergency Procedures because of a book already released on the subject, so of course I immediately tracked it down and read it.
Now I'm pissed. Getting a piece rejected because of this thing is like losing a marathon to a crippled cat. This book is a stiff, shambling, lifeless horror not unlike the zombies it portrays. I don't know what gigantic practical joke over at Three Rivers Press convinced Mr Brooks that a book about fighting zombies should be serious, but the result is a section on "Setting a zombie on fire" so boring it makes me want to cry. If you'd told me that was possible last week I would have laughed at you. Now, I can only weep.
Understanding how this could have happened becomes a lot easier when you realise that fully 5% of the book is given over to advertising his 'serious novel', World War Z. Which I won't be reading. Painfully hilarious is the introductory section which spends a full page explaining that this book won't deal with silly "movie zombies" - you know, the ENTIRE REASON this book has a market. Nope, Mr Brooks thinks its far better to stick with his own overspecific and very restrictive zombie description for the entire work. To understand how much he's missed the point, understand: he spends half a chapter pointing out why chainsaws and shotguns are a poor choice of anti-zombie weapon.
I'm donating my copy of this tragedy to the local library, so that anyone else who wants to check it out doesn't have to buy it. Because purchasing this from the 'humour' section of a bookstore would be funding the biggest categorisation error since the Titanic was labeled "unsinkable".
Now I'm pissed. Getting a piece rejected because of this thing is like losing a marathon to a crippled cat. This book is a stiff, shambling, lifeless horror not unlike the zombies it portrays. I don't know what gigantic practical joke over at Three Rivers Press convinced Mr Brooks that a book about fighting zombies should be serious, but the result is a section on "Setting a zombie on fire" so boring it makes me want to cry. If you'd told me that was possible last week I would have laughed at you. Now, I can only weep.
Understanding how this could have happened becomes a lot easier when you realise that fully 5% of the book is given over to advertising his 'serious novel', World War Z. Which I won't be reading. Painfully hilarious is the introductory section which spends a full page explaining that this book won't deal with silly "movie zombies" - you know, the ENTIRE REASON this book has a market. Nope, Mr Brooks thinks its far better to stick with his own overspecific and very restrictive zombie description for the entire work. To understand how much he's missed the point, understand: he spends half a chapter pointing out why chainsaws and shotguns are a poor choice of anti-zombie weapon.
I'm donating my copy of this tragedy to the local library, so that anyone else who wants to check it out doesn't have to buy it. Because purchasing this from the 'humour' section of a bookstore would be funding the biggest categorisation error since the Titanic was labeled "unsinkable".