The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks

by Luan Bui
(Rockville, Maryland, USA)

Genre:Humor
Pages: 288
Publication: Sept 2003
Recognition: New York Times Bestseller

Summary: Its a survival guide against zombies.


Take your typical knock-knock joke:
Knock knock!
Who's there?
Your son.
Your son who?
Your son Who loves you.

Now you may or may not find this joke funny, but regardless of your subjectivity, honestly try to imagine someone wrote a 270 page book about this one simplistic joke. It wouldn't exactly be the most captivating hook for a book. Such is the case for Max Brooks' The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead, a tongue-in-cheek survival manual against the undead. Supposedly a mockery of real survival guides, The Zombie Survival Guide seems like a promisingly humorous jab at horror movies but is just as laborious to read as any other dry instruction booklet.

The Zombie Survival Guide details a fictitious virus called Salanum that infects the human brain and turns its host into a mindless cannibal. The book instructs on how to identify a zombie, recommends weapons to use against the horde, how to defend against and attack them, and even how to live in an apocalyptic world dominated by zombies. Throughout the novel, Max Brook writes in a deadpan tone while presenting a notable touch of comical paranoia. The problem is that the book is needlessly exhausted with information and does not consistently maintain its sense of humor from beginning to end. There were times where I was tempted to consider the book a humorless and straightforward guide to surviving a zombie outbreak and not a entertaining parody of anything.

Overall, I felt that the book was a complete disappointment. I could not recommend this book to anybody. If your planning on starting a discussion about a book about zombies, don't use Max Brooks' Zombie Survival Guide.