Fiftieth

Okay, so I'm going to try, not quite  abook review, but a book recommendation. Maybe more of a book evangelisation. I've just finished reading a fantastic book, one which has thrilled and chilled me in equal amounts.

The book in question is World War Z, by a guy called Max Brooks. Have a look here for the US Amazon store link. The book is a fictional history of a 'Zombie War', where the Earth has been ravaged by what could only be called a Zombie Apocalypse. It's a book which requires a certain suspension of disbelief to get into, purely because of the subject matter, but if you're willing to get round the idea that you;re reading a book about zombies, it will repay you in full.

The book takes the form of a series of short interviews with people who have survived the war, and is written in a completely straight-laced tone, it's not a comedy, tongue in cheek pastiche, it's an intelligent, well thought out look at what happens to people when society as we know it suffers a complete and total breakdown and the civil and military authorities we rely on are completely powerless to do anything to save us. The interviewees are from a wide cross-section, taking in both civilian and military personnel from countries all over the world, but primarily the US, relating their experiences immediately before, during and after the War. Each account is fascinating in its own right, some of them are downright chilling and some of them are harrowing.

There are interviews with former political and military leaders relating how they variously warned their superiors of the problem after inital reports began leaking out of China and opther parts of Asia, how these reports were initially ignored and later covered up in favour of lies, whitewashes and simple denial to save political positions and powers. There are interviews with survivors of the 'Great Panic', where the civilian populace of almost every city in every country around the world finally realised what was happening and simultaneously fled their homes and tried to escape to safety.
One account is from a woman who was still a child when her family left, fleeing North from California to Canada or Alaska along with millions of others, getting trapped in massive shanty towns or camps as Winter closed in around them, fighting and begging for what little food remained, having to esort to cannibalism to survive, "Winter hit us really hard in early December. The snow was over our heads, literally, mountains of it, thick and gray from the pollution. The camp got silent. No more fights, no more shooting. By Christmas Day there was plenty of food."
One interview in particular sticks in my mind, it's with a member of the South Korean Intelligence Agency. In the book, the author details that the population of North Korea have vanished from the face of the Earth, their government having chosen to withdraw their people underground, into the massive secret complexes that many in the intelligence community actually believe exist today. The interviewee details how he is constantly refused permission to cross the border and investigate for fears that these bunkers may have been compromised, that infection has spread to them he says, "Maybe those caverns are teeming with twenty-three millin zombies, emaciated automaons howling in the darkness and just waiting to be unleashed." If that doesn't send a shiver up your spine, then you're a braver person than I am.
There are interviews with soldiers, detailing the US military's first major attempt to stem the tide, which ends in abject failure, as do most of the world's military. There are inteviews with the people who were there when the remaining world's politicians decide to fight back and reclaim their lands literally one step at a time, starting with the re-organised US Military. 
What follows is not the gung-ho, flag waving plan that you might expect, like the rest of the book, it focuses squarely on the human aspect of the war effort, interviewing the soldiers who had to reclaim their town and cities from teh walking dead, and looking at the new tactics which had to be developed to fight an enemy that follows none of the established 'rules' of combat that mankind has instinctively followed since birth.
By the end of the book, we are shown that the political and even the geographical landscape of the entire planet has been drastically altered. The USA, although recovering well, is nowhere near as powerful as it was, simply because of its size, and the effort required to make the country safe again. Russia has 'rediscovered' itself and is well on its way to become a world power again. Smaller countries based on islands, have risen to prominence now, due to them having been easier to defend and keep 'clean' during the initial outbreak - Cuba is now a major interntaional banking hub, much like Switzerland is today. Japan is a shadow of its former self has been ravaged due to their weak military might, leaving them unable to mount significant defense.

I really can't recommend this book enough - I burned through it in about 24 hours. Despite being a zombie fan, I've never considered picking up anything in the 'zombie fiction' genre. You could argue the case that this book is so well written that it could instead be classed as alternate history, rather than straight up horror/fiction.