to remember and to let go.

so like first of all: diverse cast. i simply don't believe that making people originate from different countries/nations/whatever makes them diverse, because probably 80-90% of the stories in the book all felt like reading the same fucking voice. even when you got some "personality" it was from military people, who naturally all sounded the fucking same as each other. only 2 that really stuck out were the woman who reverted back to being a little girl mentally, and that jackass who created fake meds and didn't give a fuck about how he screwed people over bc he got rich.

i found maybe 2-3 characters likable, maybe 1 lovable, and that's about it. a lot of it due to what i was saying above lmfao

reading 80% of this book on a zombie outbreak just for the major plot reveal of how they took back earth being "we had a meeting of nations where the americans said we're gonna start fighting (as if anybody ever stopped??) and we all didn't like the idea but we did it anyway" and it cutting to the nations split off, with americans doing a fucking square formation to kill thousands of zombies without a single gun jam or fatality. ok. and then it cutting to russians and how they were using decades/centuries old equipment and constantly dying during their own efforts, and the interviewee multiple times going "we didn't have what You Americans had-" because this book is obsessed with america. absolutely fucking ridiculous, so annoying.

one of the goodbye chapters having the nerve to include someone talking about how "the war sucked but it brought us all together" after just having these chapters talking about nations agreeing together to start sweeping lands, but then instantly breaking off from each other into lopsided war efforts that just resulted in unnecessary deaths and open anger at how certain lands were handling their efforts (the french man fucking livid that they were forced to clear the catacombs fast fast fast but people elsewhere got to take years in their sweeping cities being the most obvs example) + everyone dunking on how russia has regressed hardcore. it's just Ridiculous. there's no connected humanity, stop trying to say there is

the timeline of this book is fucking horrendous, in terms of how it's laid out through the reading experience + the information it gives in text. the apocalypse was supposedly a decade long, but it reads like it would've last maybe 4 years max. one of the biggest offenders in this area was reading about a forest camp of people resorting to murder and cannibalism because they've run out of food/power/general resources and are all starving/freezing to death in a random canadian forest, & then in another chapter we're listening to a guy tell us about how he took his car and not only filmed a days-long battle with his movie making camera, but he then drove back to his hollywood home and used his Editing Computer to make a full movie, that he was then able to make over a dozen copies of and play for people all over. and then kept making movies. we get an indication that the cannibals story was maybe months into the outbreak, but the hollywood director with fully functioning power??? nothing at all. i would assume that it's happening further into the decade, but that makes it sound even fucking worse that he has access to these things. how the fuck is a city like LA not overrun immediately when the outbreak hits it, but instead chill enough for a guy to have running computers and people throughout the city can play movies too??? good lord.

i enjoyed the first doctor's story, i cried over the repeated "don't worry, it'll be alright" line. i really liked the moment where ajay was worried she couldn't apologize to a boat crewman for not having any money to be on their boat and the guy just said "hold on, we're getting out of here" because i love when people are Good. i liked the tiny moments of explaining how certain shit happens, like the explaining of how so many infected are in the water because captains just order infected passengers thrown overboard en masse sometimes. as fucking batshit insane as it was and horrible to read (i did cry), i liked the russian decimation thread.

i liked the redeker plan shit, i thoroughly enjoyed him as a character, especially his ending where it's implied that getting that hug made him start to feel shit and eventually the guilt of his insane plan drove him so crazy that he created an entire new personality divorced from himself. a truly devastating character, i loved him--UNFORTUNATELY. it's also tied into the fucking atrocious timeline handling, because his plan sounds like the tipping point for taking back grounds for humanity, but then we spend another like 60% of the book backtracking and not progressing at all in that department.

i really liked the little tidbit about how some of the exiled criminals managed to create their own little fiefdoms amongst pockets of land, some of them even being quite powerful. naturally this isn't explored at all but i find it super interesting to think about both during and after the zombie war.

"I don't know if great times make great men, but I know they can kill them." was a very good and very heartbreaking line after hearing about a good president

the quislings are fucking Insane and i loved it, i loved that concept. the bit about fighters using flashlights to check if they're facing a zombie or a quisling because zombies don't blink?? super fun.

i basically stopped taking highlights after that point because i was just getting increasingly annoyed and over the book.

i spoke a little about it here, but the writing for women just got horrendous as i continued that fuckass pilot chapter. and then one of the final interviews in the ending pages of the book where we have to learn that russian has regressed so far back that they've got women locked up (??? implied, heavily hinted) in fucking breeding clinics where they don't know who the father of these children are + don't get to see the babies after they have them. just absolute unnecessary over the top depressing shit happening to women for no fucking reason, after a book full of weird little descriptors for the female characters + the longest-word count female pov chapter being from a military pilot who is openly hostile about her own gender and tears down other women in her branch. fucking whatever dude, ok.

there were too many interviews that provided NOTHING to the plot or book overall. that pilot story was one of them, another was the loser hacker teen, and then another notable one was the absurd story about a blind man disrespecting his family and self all the way into the forest where he perceived a sign from the gods and then talked about being a fucking forest samurai. literally no purpose to reading about this man putting his ear to the ground and hearing zombies half a mile out and then standing there waiting for them, before bowing to them and thanking the zombies for warning him of their approach before one-shot killing them. might as well fucking tip his fedora over here going "thank you zombie for your noise notification" my god