Reviews of Cell and World War Z

Originally written December 9, 2009

This was my first Stephen King book to ever be read, so I wasn't sure what to expect when I started reading it. I was lead to believe it was a zombie book, and to quote one of the reviews in the front of the book: "If any writer is capable of producing the Great American Zombie Novel it would have to be Stephen King..." (The Washington Post), so I had high expectations for a zombie book written by Stephen King, the undisputed horror master! But sadly these were squashed, for deep down, it was not a true zombie book.

The book starts off with our main character, Clayton Riddel, in Boston, and he sees people who answer their cell phone at 3:01pm just suddenly go apeshit crazy: attacking people, smashing their heads and faces into walls or plate glass windows, all that fun stuff. Sure, the people who got zapped by the weird cell phone Pulse turned into crazy psychos or they were lost in some weird, unexplained trance, but they were not TRUE ZOMBIES. They didn't die and come back to life to feed upon the flesh of the living, although some did attack and feast on other "phone crazies" or "normies" throughout the book, but they were not dead. So minus a few points there. And the rest of the story is how Clay and a rag-tag group of survivors, or those who weren't on a phone at 3:01pm, try to make it up to Maine to see if Clay's wife and son survived the chaos. And along the way, the "phone-crazies" are evolving and showing strange new powers and abilities that just make things more weird and left-field than truely scary.

Overall, the book was a good read, creepy in a lot of places, but not really scary. Unless you think that this could happen, since how many people now have cell phones? I mean, really, just go to Target or your local mall and just sit and watch the people walk by, counting how many have cell phones. Do you have a cell phone? Some weird terrorist attack could work through the cell phone transmitters and cause chaos. Really, that's the only scary thing of the book, how reality-based it is. I'm not sure how true-to-life the "phone crazies" could be, but one never knows.

I'm not sure if I'm okay with never knowing what exactly caused the Pulse to happen. I guess the point of the book was to show how this horror affected one man and the small group of survivors he travels with; and in their struggle to survive, they never really get into a situation to figure it out. No government base or agents to stumble upon to get answers. Kind of like Shaun of the Dead, we never know what causes the zombies, we just see one Brit try to save his family and friends. I liked the book, got bogged down in a few places do to lack of action or scariness, but overall, good read. I think I may read Pet Cemetery next, which I hear is scary as shit.

On my rating scale, I give it a good 7. Not fantastic, and I wasn't as scared as the hype surrounding Mr. King led me to believe I would be upon reading one of his novels, but still good. Hopefully the next King tome will be scarier.

I finished reading World War Z last night and it was really good. A chilling look at the world-wide chaos of an all-out zombie invasion. The only thing I didn't like was that there was no real explanation as to what started the zombies. Apparently a little boy in China was dubbed Patient Zero after he got sick from playing around a man-made-lake. But I guess that adds to the creepiness and fear of zombies: no one really knows what starts it. George A. Romero played with the idea that cosmic radiation from a passing meteor caused it (Night of the Living Dead), and Patient Zero by Maberry introduced biological warfare zombies... there are hundreds of ways to create zombies, I guess. Anyhoo. A solid 8.5 on my rating scale. It's one of the best zombie books I've read (and sadly there aren't many). Super good. And the part about the North Korean tunnels? Holy crap, super freaky! I'm really thinking about getting the audio version. Henry Rollins is on it (as are Alan Alda, Carl & Rob Reiner) and I love me Henry Rollins! He did a voice for one of the Joker gang members in Batman Beyond. Next time I head to Half Price Books I'll have to look for it.