R is your average guy (for a zombie). He has a job (hunting down the few remaining human survivors), he's married (to a zombie woman) and has kids (zombie kids) He even goes to church (yeah, a zombie church). But that's really not enough for R. Somehow, he just finds it hollow and meaningless, like he's just shambling through life without any real purpose. His wife leaves him for another shuffling undead monstrosity, but he finds it just doesn't affect him all that much. After indulging in some recreational brain eating, he finds something that catches his interest like nothing else: a living girl named Julie. But rather than kill her and consume her sweet, delicious brains, he finds he has the urge to keep her alive and protect her. Awesomeness ensues.
Warm Bodies is, fundamentally, a story about defiance, hope, and fulfillment. I've found that most stories in the zombie apocalypse genre focus on accepting the inevitable nature of a bleak situation and moving on, but this story has a diametrically opposed spirit. It screams at the you to reject inevitabilities and embrace the things you think are impossible.
Maybe it's a goal that you're just too old and tired to accomplish, an unrequited love you have no chance of winning over, or a cure for a civilization-killing zombie plague: The things that you hope for may be impossible, but that doesn't make them worthless or dumb. Our aspirations shape us and energize us. They carry us from what we are to what we can be. They pull us out of the rigor mortis of normality– that grey haze in which we find ourselves doing the same thing, day after day, because we can and it's easy– and force us to confront both life's limitations and it's possibilities.
R's story shows the reader that a life without something impossible to strive for is one that's mostly dead. True, there's little in the way of pain or fear in that kind of life, but it also lacks the joy and exhilaration that impossible something inspires in you. And sometimes, every once in a while, the impossible turns out not to be.
Read this book, you won't regret it.
You post about this book is so much deeper and more thoughtful than mine (I sum up: Zombies! Romeo & Juliet! Brains!)
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ReplyDeleteGreat review! I've been looking for something to read for a while, and now I think i've found it!
ReplyDeleteWhy read the book? You're review was plenty inspirational in and of itself. You've reinvigorated my childhood dreams of world domination. I'll be sure to acknowledge you in my manifesto... soon to be compulsory reading for all global citizenry.
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