I was surprised by this one. A zombie book but it was actually pretty well written, captured reasonably well a large variety of voices, and lent an interesting point of perspective on a zombie apocalypse. Instead of being a frantic narrative account of growing danger and frantic action, the narrative reflections created a distance from the events and allowed the characters to recreate their feelings about living through the events. Strangely, some of the most important points of the book, such as the most important policy in combating the zombies involved saving some of the population while leaving the rest behind as bait, were almost throwaway comments in some of the narratives.

I did 'read' this one through the audio version (an all star cast and one of the best done audio books I've read). Brooks did a reasonably well job of creating a wide variety of characters from many different countries and cultures, but I'm not sure that that wasn't a result of the excellent performances on the audio book rather than skilful writing.

I'm also not entirely comfortable with the politics embedded in the narrative or sure what that is supposed to say or comment about present day politics. Whether that is Chinese democracy, Cuban triumphs, the failures/successes of various militaries, the successes/failures of various armed/unarmed populations, and the prepreparedness to tackle a zombie invasion.

But an entertaining read and surprisingly well done one for a zombie novel.