World War Z – Audio Book
A review by Darth Thought
4 out of 5 Stars
I normally don’t pick up audio books. I can’t stand someone reading to me; but Max Brook’s World War Z is not just an audio book, it’s as close to an audio drama as you can get without having to buy a Big Finish CD Set. It boasts a full cast of character’s all connected to Max Brook’s voice acting career and I would be lying if I said I didn’t know a lot of them specifically Jürgen Prochnow,
Mark Hamill, Alan Alda, Carl Reiner, and Bob Reiner. They all do spectacular jobs at giving voices to the characters in my head, and for the most part this is a better version than the book itself.
Now this isn’t going to be a big article like all my other’s because, it’s an audio book and I’d be lying if I said I knew a lot about it. But as a casual listener, and an honest to god fan of the other book, I can tell you this:
It does a great job of capturing the atmosphere of the interviews, having a full voice cast helps this along a great deal. My problems with the book are done away with in so much as that it is an actual abridgment and for the most part does away with some of the tedious stuff I talked about the book having. It flows better, they’ve cut out a lot of the meaningless interviews, and the actors do a good job encapsulating the feel of the book while making the characters even more alive.
So you’re saying ok you’ve given it praise why isn’t it a 5 out of 5?
Well that can be summed up in the simple words, while it cut out some meaningless interviews it also cut out some of the greatest interviews, gone is the interview with a survivor of one of the church mercy killings, gone is the otaku who survived most of the war in his house and didn’t even realize what was going on. That and while it is good the interviews are sterile; sure you have the interviews but the problem is that most of the interviews took place in public places where there would have been noise. It’s not there, and while the voice cast can draw you in, it’s still distracting not hearing the actions. Instead you’ll have Max Brooks reading out the directions as the interviewer put them down. Maybe it’s just me and I’m being overly picky about the fact that this is an audio book and I expect something like an actual radio drama, but still for something like World War Z to be so sterile sounding and only have sound breaks between the interviews for the introductions, seems well a little lacking.
All in all if you are a fan of the book you should give this a listen. If you are someone who doesn’t really read books(shame on you but I digress), pick this up you’ll have a great time and hey it’s a great way to gear up for The Walking dead!
I wasn't a fan of zombie genre stuff until I started watching the excellent Walking Dead series. Since it went into hiatus I've been filling the gap with discovering the works of George Romero AND this beatifully produced work by Max Brooks et al.
ReplyDeleteI loved the reading and the multiple narrators. I was so intrigued by what was left out that I am now reading the book. I feel like I'm walking through this whole thing backwards!
Thanks for your review.
The audio book was great don't get me wrong I just personally fealt like it was incomplete. The actual book was something i would tell anyone who liked zombie movies about, however the audio book cut out some of my very favorite parts of the actual book. I put this in as a warning to anyone who feels like it would be a full replacement of the real thing. The voices of the cast match perfectly but nothing can compare to picking up the book and reading it for yourself.
ReplyDeleteThere's an unabridged version of the audiobook out now; it looks to be 12 hours on 10 CDs, or you can just get The Lost Files which has the extra 5+ hours that weren't in the original abridged. Fortunately I'm a late adopter so I'll be starting off with the full version.
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