Xombies: Apocalypse Blues (Xombies, #1) by Walter Greatshell

Jul 30, 2011 Ceridwen rated it 2 of 5 stars

Recommended to Ceridwen by: Unhealthy personal obsessions

Shelves: america-and-environs, daddy-drinks-because-you-cry, insomnia, zombies

One of my favorite (non-Goodreads) reviewers is a guy called Nathan Rabin, who writes for the AV Club, the critical wing of the Onion. He started a project a few years back where he reviewed a movie that had flopped, every week, and the reviews are collected in a book called My Year of Flops. I loved this series, a retrospective of failure and why those failures happened. He developed a rating system for these films, based on the movie Elizabethtown, which was the first MYoF subject. The films c...more One of my favorite (non-Goodreads) reviewers is a guy called Nathan Rabin, who writes for the AV Club, the critical wing of the Onion. He started a project a few years back where he reviewed a movie that had flopped, every week, and the reviews are collected in a book called My Year of Flops. I loved this series, a retrospective of failure and why those failures happened. He developed a rating system for these films, based on the movie Elizabethtown, which was the first MYoF subject. The films could be a Failure, or a Secret Success, or a Fiasco. Failure is obvious; secret success is too. A fiasco, now, that takes some stones. That's a mess of epic proportions, a labor of love and insanity, a balls-to-the-wall disaster that mushroom clouds with epic incoherence. This book is a fiasco. Any one section could have been its own book, but this book hurtles along, pulled by this endless active need to get to the next thing, the next idea, and so it's blammo! action! this one idea! psyche! moving on! introduce a character! kill him! make him indistinguishable from some other guy! blue people! crabs! a sub! blammo!

This book is compulsive in its need to get to the next thing, the next situation, and as a consequence gives every situation short shrift. Each episode is introduced, set up, knocked down, rat-a-tat, and while I think there might have been a larger point, it was so confused, so barnacled with extraneous styles, actions, characters, sub-plots that the point was groaning with the weight of it all. A girl, Lulu is hanging out with her deadbeat mom, who is semi-stalking a guy that she claims is Lulu's father. Lulu and mom head into town when it turns out that ZOMBIES RUN, OMG MOM'S A ZOMBIE.
Maybe Dad grabs the girl, then we're in a military sub and it turns out that there's a bunch of confusing stuff about the military and Maybe Dad, and a bunch of boys, torture, and shenanigans. And then a listing ship in the Arctic, with a bunch of weird Brit characters – which was my favorite sequence, told well - then a distopic society run by rich guys, and a bunch of Aleuts, and, seriously, what is going on? For no good reason at all, Maybe Dad is understood to be Dad, and that itches me.

Lulu is never convincingly a girl – I have spent some time being one myself, and I found a lot of her motivations hard to follow – and despite having it explained to me why she is important to the whole cure for the Xombies thing, it didn't track. The X in xombies is because the pathogen or whatever it is affects women first, get it? XX??? But Lulu has some sort of disease that makes her not-menstruate, so she's safe or something. (view spoiler)

There's some other confused stuff about gender which is too hard to explain, mostly in the weird sequence in the richy rich section. All I'm saying is that if you are one of the few ladies left in a fucked up plutocracy, you are not going to be a sexually jealous bitch. You are going to be worrying so much about the impending gang-rape, or recovering from the last one, that you don't have time to be all like, who's the new chick, and is she going to take my man(s)? I'm not saying that women are all wonderful and altruistic, I'm saying that we're not all fucking stupid in crisis situations that hinge on our vaginas. Srsly.

Richard has always bitched about how zombies violate the laws of physics, so they are an annoying monster to him, but the best monsters are metaphors for something else, so that can be okay by me. And they tend to be rigidly rule-bound, like any monster. You can shoot them in the head, or burn them, or whatever, just like vamps don't like the sun and werewolves don't like silver. Despite all this jibber-jabber about the medical causes of zombiism here in the book, the zombies so thoroughly violate physics – these ones can't be killed by any means, as far as I can tell, and arms and legs severed from the body move on their own, often with motivation. How...what? Seriously, throw me a bone here about brain activity after death, or something, because sentient arms does me in. There's some hastily sketched stuff likening zombies to the Marxist uprising metaphors that make zombies appealing to me, as a metaphor, but it's not enough, and too late, and not coherent.

The really astonishing thing to me is that, despite the fact that this book is crammed with all this stuff – gender, the class wars, the military-industrial complex, young love, daddy issues, mommy issues, coming of age, etc, etc – this enormous fiasco, the ending is still totally hanging for the next installment. I guess it makes sense that there is no way that this could tie up satisfactorily, but I have to hand it to this book for having so many ideas that this fiasco had to be serialized. I'm half-tempted to pick up the next installment, just to watch a thousand more ideas and characters get introduced, and then get dropped for the next thing. Though the characterizations and dialogue are crap, there's some nice set-pieces which were written with energy and imagination. In all the mess was some writing I enjoyed. Zombies are ultimately about mindless activity, and this book has the frenetic activity thing down. I'm not going to call it mindless, because that's not fair, but it sure doesn't stop to think. (less)

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Dec 15, 2009 Nick rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: first-reads, horror

The best parts of the story itself had very little to do with the zombies, spelled with an "X" for reasons that will become apparent to anyone who reads the book. The strength of the story is the tale of what mankind will do in a truly global crisis, and how they react, as groups or as individuals.
The cover artist, or the art director who approved the design, should of course be severely punished. The abnormally young appearance of the central character is a major plot point, and she HAS no clea...more

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Dec 19, 2011 Marvin rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: horror

I am only about a quarter through but I feel compelled to respond to the many Goodreads reviewers who say this isn't a zombie novel.

It's a zombie novel.

They urghh and arghh like any zombie just a little faster. Just because you place a X instead of a Z doesn't make it different. You can put replace SK in skunk with a X and it stills stinks.

But is it a good zombie novel? It's a little early to tell but so far I keep thinking of Xunks.

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I finished it and will have a rating and full review...more I am only about a quarter through but I feel compelled to respond to the many Goodreads reviewers who say this isn't a zombie novel.

It's a zombie novel.

They urghh and arghh like any zombie just a little faster. Just because you place a X instead of a Z doesn't make it different. You can put replace SK in skunk with a X and it stills stinks.

But is it a good zombie novel? It's a little early to tell but so far I keep thinking of Xunks.

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I finished it and will have a rating and full review up shortly. Hint: It is definitely not a xunk.

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So anyways...

Xombies: Apocalpse Blue, the first installment of Greatshell's Xombies series isn't a xunk but it is not exactly a rose (xose?) either. While it is a zombie novel it manages to do what all good zombie novels must do and that is be about something other than zombies. One of its faults is that it tends to be about way more than the author can comfortably handle. The first section features the onslaught of zombies, called xombies for reasons explained in the book, and the struggle for survival by our 17 year old heroine Lulu. Then about a third through the focus shifts away from xombies to the isolation and struggle of the survivors for power...on a submarine no less! This change is both incredibly imaginative and somewhat chaotic. We are introduced to some very shady characters and the basic themes are developed involving...well, I won't ruin it for you but lets just say some of our evil protagonist's ideas are sort of Ayn Rand turned on her head. Speaking of Ayn Rand, how come no one has ever written a novel in which Ayn Rand is a zombie? That would explain a lot. But I digress...

I ended up liking this book. However there was much that disturbed me. There are no really likable character. The main character Lulu comes close but she often feels too unreal to really identify with. Also, by the end it become very hard to take sides with anyone. In fact, I started to side with the xombies although I suspect that may actually have been the author's intention. But in the long run, the originality of this novel and the author's riveting style wins out to the point that I give it three and a half stars. (less)

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Dec 03, 2008 Cindy Engelhardt rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: young women and people who like well written literary novels

Recommended to Cindy by: my sister

This book is not for genre fans. It is a literary novel that happens to include zombies and a submarine. If you're interested in a well written novel with a deeply flawed and interesting female protagonist, read this book. All my female friends love this book, and so do I.

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Mar 31, 2013 Jeff Jellets rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: zombies, fiction

Xombies is a hard book to categorize.

It would be easy to just pigeonhole it as yet another zombie apocalypse story – but that would be the lazy reviewer’s way out because there’s a lot more to Xombies then … well … ummm … zombies. From a bit of The Hunt for Red October, to (as the cover proclaims) Lord of the Flies, to grim dystopian sci-fi, Xombies seems to move pretty effortlessly from genre to genre. But let’s start out with the zombie stuff because there’s nothing I like better than a good z...more Xombies is a hard book to categorize.

It would be easy to just pigeonhole it as yet another zombie apocalypse story – but that would be the lazy reviewer’s way out because there’s a lot more to Xombies then … well … ummm … zombies. From a bit of The Hunt for Red October, to (as the cover proclaims) Lord of the Flies, to grim dystopian sci-fi, Xombies seems to move pretty effortlessly from genre to genre. But let’s start out with the zombie stuff because there’s nothing I like better than a good zombie novel and, for at least two thirds of the novel, Xombies works really well as just that.

In today’s market, it may be hard to make any zombie outbreak feel fresh, but author Walter Greatshell pulls it off. The book’s first two chapters are permeated with the creepy emptiness of “a-world-turned-off” by a sinister contagion and, when the zombies do arrive, it’s heart-pounding and portrayed with cinematic vividness. Like a good horror flick, it’s something you know is coming, but like a good film director, Greatshell still manages to build the tension and scare the pants off you when the inevitable rotting horde arrives.

Greatshell’s writing is clearly a large part of what makes this book enjoyable. Clean, crisp and built for speed, I pretty much devoured (pun!) the whole book in just a few days as Greatshell’s characters, pacing and plot twists kept me turning pages. There’s a wonderfully horrific section with an abandoned cruise ship ensconced in ice and lots of little twists and turns (such as when the characters make a quick stop in Newfoundland) that make this a really great horror story for most of the book.

But there is more. Greatshell also does a pretty good Tom Clancy imitation as sets the book’s protagonists up on a nuclear sub and, with only a single woman aboard, Greatshell is also able to channel William Golden and reinvent the tension of Lord of the Flies as a very Darwinist struggle simmers between the surviving boys, military men, and the lone heroine, Lulu. In less capable hands, I could see these elements fusing into quite a mess, but Greatshell handles these elements pretty effortlessly and hammers then into something a lot more than “just-another-zombie story.”

Perhaps unfortunately, the book doesn’t stop there and, as the protagonists reach a very questionable sanctuary in Greenland, Greatshell risks adding one more straw to the camel’s back, and we head into the realm of dystopian sci-fi more than anything else. Even here there is still a lot to like as the author moves the cast rather gracefully into a strange domed compound – complete with Vegas-style facades of the world’s greatest cities and, outside the main compound, a “billionaires-in-exile” airfield of stranded corporate jets. But the novel does seem to lose its footing here – almost as if the author was about as unsure as his characters as to what to do next. Where before the plot seemed to move along effortlessly, things start to meander a bit, lots of perverse old guys are introduced, and when the ending does come, it’s kind of unsatisfying. Maybe it feels a bit like the movie 28 Days Later? All that cool zombie stuff up front, and then the last half of the movie we get stuck inside a military base with some sexually frustrated soldiers whose only interest seems to be hanging on to last remaining women in England. Yeah … the end of the book feels a bit like that.

Still, despite the disappointing ending, Xombies is worth a look. So much of the novel is over-the-top fantastic than I can forgive the end and write it off as just a set-up for the next book in the series – which I will dutifully buy.
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Jan 20, 2013 Val Nwosu rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Let me start by saying that this is by no means a bad book! In fact I actually gave it to my ex-girlfriend and told her that she HAS to read it. This author had an interesting take on the whole zombie genre, which I liked. The zombie hordes were actually "Xombies" and will be referred to as such for the remainder of this review. These, "Xombies" were more agile and way more resilient than your regular shambling masses.

The story revolves around a girl named Lulu that has spent most of her life...more

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Jun 29, 2011 William M. rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: horror

If you have never heard of Walter Greatshell before, join the club. He seemed to have come out of nowhere and dive onto the scene with this very exciting zombie novel with a military/sci-fi/medical twist. The first two thirds are the strongest, and then the book takes a drastic shift. Some will enjoy it, some might not. I was in between. It was still very gripping, just not what I expected. I had a hard time believing that things could have been as organized as they were (at the air base) in suc...more

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Nov 05, 2010 Patrick D'Orazio rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Its hard for me to pin this book down. It is not really a book about Zombies, except in only the slightest sense-at least not any zombies I have ever read or seen. You could say that these creatures are dead and want you to join them...in which case, they are a zombie variation, but honestly they are not. They are just as much vampires as zombies in that they give you the "kiss of death" and poof! you are one of them.

What I liked about this story was that the author took a great deal of time cr...more Its hard for me to pin this book down. It is not really a book about Zombies, except in only the slightest sense-at least not any zombies I have ever read or seen. You could say that these creatures are dead and want you to join them...in which case, they are a zombie variation, but honestly they are not. They are just as much vampires as zombies in that they give you the "kiss of death" and poof! you are one of them.

What I liked about this story was that the author took a great deal of time creating this new disease and new creature. He expended some effort to make this new Xombie creation and I give him credit for that. The author also has a strong working knowledge of submarines and the Navy, which helped tremendously with the story line. Do I know if he was totally accurate in all his descriptions? No, but the details were exceptional and kept that part of the story believable. Overall, he has fleshed out a very detailed and deliberate tale that does twist a few times and surprised me. Once again, this is not your average tale of the undead. What I expected going in was another apocalyptic tale of survival and while that is a part of this-it is the foundation, the story diverges from that dramatically by the end.

I did like Lulu, the main character. She is fully developed (well...the character is, physically she is far from developed) and believable in many ways. I think the author spent so much time on her though that he delved a great deal less on the other characters. Her father is detailed and a few boys on the sub stand out, but they are all rather limited in scope next to our heroin. Of course the story is told in first person so she is the shining star of it all and we see everything from her perspective. There were just too many peripheral characters that snuck in and out of the story and didn't mean too much.

I didn't complain about the fact that we get to know the fate of the main character before the story even starts, I can accept that as a plot device-we know the end, but how do you get there? The question in instances like this usually is: Is this story strong enough to allow the audience to know up front the fate of our hero/heroin? Unfortunately, I am not sure that this story was. I did not really enjoy huge chunks of the book and while it was strong in places the bit revealed in the beginning just dampened my expectations even with the surprises the author unleashes. It seemed a grind through certain areas of text and I found my self just trying to muddle through. The author knows how to put detail into his work and I guess the claustrophobia and stir crazy experience of the characters in the sub wormed its way through too well for me. I just wanted them to get off the damn boat as much as they did after a while.

The bottom line for me was this book just does not resonate. Sure, it was interesting, it was different, and I am sure there is a message in there somewhere (power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely?) but some of it was just odd. I guess having a boy who has a fur fetish, old men who are willing to pretend that young boys in makeup and dresses are an adequate replacement for real women, muslim Beatle cover bands and many other things are all ok, but it was just too surreal I guess. I do wish more time was spent with the Xombies themselves-more action sequences giving us more exposure to them. They just don't get too much coverage throughout the book. They appear in the beginning and in the end, but there is this huge gaping maw in the middle that really dragged. I would definitely have liked to get to know the Blue Meanies a bit more.

This book was a novelty that was creative and certainly different but still left me feeling I could take it or leave it. As is usually the case for me I was glad I read something new and different, but in the end, it won't be a lasting memory for me.(less)

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Sep 27, 2009 Dreadlocksmile rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

First published back in 2004, Walter Greatshell’s debut novel ‘Xombies’ (later reissued under the title ‘Xombies: Apocalypse Blues’) was originally planned to be titled ‘Dead Sea’ referring not only the classic George Romero zombie films, but also the extinct culture of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the inner sea of the human body – specifically, the tides of the menstrual cycle (the X in Xombies refers to the female chromosome). The title is also more relevant to the submarine voyage and its resulti...more

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Aug 27, 2011 Ryan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Ryan by: Holly May

Wow! What a ride! I literally could not put this book down. I almost got hit by a car while walking to work and reading this book at the same time - that is how engrossed I became in this story.

Initially released as Xombies, Walter Greatshell altered the title in the most recently released editions of this book. Why? The author put it best in his own words:

you see a book called "Xombies" and you naturally expect it to be about marauding ghouls. Hey, I love marauding ghouls, but they're only a sm

...more

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Apr 03, 2012 Izamari rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

El agente X ha arrasado al país en menos de un mes. Las principales infectadas fueron mujeres en periodo menstrual. A estas primeras infectadas se les conoce como “menedé”. Las menedé, trasformaron a todos a su paso en xombies. Personas extremadamente fuerte, inteligente y con una extraña piel azul. El mundo se está viniendo abajo, pero Lulú y su madre, encerradas en su casa, no se dan cuenta de nada, hasta que ya es demasiado tarde.
Con la ayuda de su supuesto padre, Lulú huye de su madre, quien...more El agente X ha arrasado al país en menos de un mes. Las principales infectadas fueron mujeres en periodo menstrual. A estas primeras infectadas se les conoce como “menedé”. Las menedé, trasformaron a todos a su paso en xombies. Personas extremadamente fuerte, inteligente y con una extraña piel azul. El mundo se está viniendo abajo, pero Lulú y su madre, encerradas en su casa, no se dan cuenta de nada, hasta que ya es demasiado tarde.
Con la ayuda de su supuesto padre, Lulú huye de su madre, quien ha contraído el virus y juntos huyen hacia una base militar secreta, donde descubren que aun siendo el fin del mundo, la corrupción existe. Y el lugar que creyeron seguro, no es más que una telaraña de mentiras e intrigas.

El inicio del libro es muy bueno, Atraves de Lulú quien es nuestra narradora, vamos descubriendo poco a poco, las condiciones decadentes en las que se encuentra el planeta Vemos como los xombies cazan a los sobrevivientes para unirlos a sus filas, pero a diferencias de los zombies a los que estamos acostumbrados, los xombies no se comen a los humanos, ellos buscan salvarlos, llevarlos hacia el conocimiento y la inmortalidad. Es por eso que los xombies le dan a los vivos, “el beso de la muerte” para salvarlos de su humanidad.
Que no se coman a los vivos, no los hace menos aterradores, pues al contrario, siendo unos seres inteligentes, se las ingenian para atrapar a todo aquel que respire

La historia en sí, es muy interesante. Como ya dije, el libro de entrada nos cuenta la situación el mundo y los xombies, después vemos como se organizan los militares y al final llegamos a un raro mundo apocalíptico donde los ricos mandan y los jóvenes son los que llevan las de perder.
Pero el libro tiene dos grandes problemas.
Uno, la heroína. Lulú no era más que una marioneta que todo mundo se pasaba. Primero su madre, después su padre, los chicos del submarino la tenían de chivo expiatorio, el general a cargo del submarino la manipulo y al final, a pesar de todo lo que paso, la siguieron utilizando para dar cordura a los xombies. Había momentos en los que Lulú lograba desesperarme.
Y el segundo problema, es que hay partes en el libro muy confusas. Por ejemplo, cuando a Lulú le explican porque las mujeres son las que más se infectan por el virus, le dicen que es debido a una anormalita genética que los humanos crearon atraves del cromosoma X pero aunque los explican cómo tres veces en el mismo capitulo, aun así no termine de entenderlo y al parecer nuestra heroína tampoco pues había momentos en los que seguía haciéndose la misma pregunta.

A pesar de que Lulú, no cubrió para mí el papel de protagonista, hay otros personajes que si lo lograron, como Fred Cowper, el supuesto papá de Lulú, quien a pesar de no aparecer mucho, las pocas participaciones que tiene son de gran tamaño y cambian todo el rumbo de las cosas.
También estan los chicos, Héctor, Julian, Jake, Shawn, Lemuel y Cole, quienes acompañaran a Lulú atraves de todo el libro haciendo más interesantes las misiones de la chica.

Y ya para terminar, quizás muchos de ustedes no deseen leer esto, así que les advierto, puede ser un spoiler si desean leer el libro… Algo que me impacto de este libro, fue que el autor no sintió el más mínimo remordimiento a la hora de matar a sus personajes. Cuando me encariñaba con uno, lo mata al siguiente capitulo. Fue toda una matanza de personajes.

Entonces, si quieren conocer unos xombies totalmente distintos y saber más sobre la milicia, sin lugar a dudas tiene que leer este libro.
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Jun 06, 2011 Kaia rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: what-the-actual-f-ck, zomgbies, ineffectual-zomgbies

It seems my relationship with zombie novels is destined to be a bit strained. (Incidentally, I have this issue fairly often -- I write genres that I don't actually get on with that well in terms of reading.)

Dos and Don'ts - Writing a Zombie Apocalypse Novel:

DON'T Make Your Contagion Based on Gender - Want to know why it's spelled X-O-M-B-I-E-S rather than Z-O-M-B-I-E-S? Brace yourselves.

Agent X is airborne (kind of. Sort of. More on that shortly.) and the initial infection only affects women (h...more

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Jun 05, 2011 Casey rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read this once before back in 2005-2006 when it was first released and enjoyed it. Recently, a good friend found it and was excited to share, but then I realized there was a whole trilogy for the books! Curiosity piqued, I gave it another go. I was just as sucked in the second time around, which is a good sign!

The book is not overly gory and is not about zombies in the Romero tradition. More in the "28 Days Later" tradition, but it's okay. The characters are a nice change and not taking the s...more

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Feb 02, 2010 BarkLessWagMore rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: horror, dnf

Well, I gave this book the old 100 page try and gave up then. I have way too many books vying for my attention to force myself to finish a book that is boring me witless.

Xombies started out well with a young girl named Lulu waking up one day to discover the world has gone mad and it seems that all women have turned into raging blue-faced Xombies due to some sort of disease. Lulu escapes this fate because she has a health condition that prevents her from maturing. After watching her mother turn b...more

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Feb 10, 2009 Thee_ron_clark rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: zombies

Here we have another take on zombies. The pandemic starts with women. Who knew?

Somehow, women contract the virus and all adult women begin turning into xombies. They, in turn infect other women and men.

Several well to do types escape to island free of the xombies along with some less well to do types. The less well to do types aren't given the same treatment as the haves. Some are even subjected to prison-style makeovers to become dates for the big-wigs. Down right scary, if you ask me.

Anyway, t...more

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Feb 19, 2011 Rolando Gill rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I am sure you have read other reviewers synopsis, I won't do that. I love the idea of zombies and zombie stories. I have read a few and I am always disappointed when the author tries too hard to make the zombie transformation understandable and easily explained. A need to explain the zombie or in this case Xombie makes reading this book longer and takes the tension out of it and I never got the AHA moment the author was going after. Greatshell was very capable in keeping the reader engaged by ho...more

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Mar 05, 2011 Ana Mardoll rated it 3 of 5 stars

Xombies: Apocalypse Blues / 978-0-441-01835-2

I love zombie fiction, and seem to be going through a lot of it lately. "Xombies" is one of those apocalypse novels where the emphasis is so much more on the human reaction to the breakdown of society, rather than on the cause of the breakdown itself - to the point where the zombies (or "xombies", if you prefer) could be just as easily replaced by space aliens or an invading force of Teletubbies and the book would still read pretty much the same.

It sh...more Xombies: Apocalypse Blues / 978-0-441-01835-2

I love zombie fiction, and seem to be going through a lot of it lately. "Xombies" is one of those apocalypse novels where the emphasis is so much more on the human reaction to the breakdown of society, rather than on the cause of the breakdown itself - to the point where the zombies (or "xombies", if you prefer) could be just as easily replaced by space aliens or an invading force of Teletubbies and the book would still read pretty much the same.

It should be noted that author Greatshell does not have a stellar opinion of mankind, which is par for the course for these tracts on the breakdown of human society in the face of serious disaster, but where Greatshell could perhaps be forgiven for automatically assuming most humans to be complete jerks, it's strange that he also seems to assume they will be so singular in their approach to jerk status. The conceit here is that the titular "Xombie" virus (with an "X" for X chromosomes), was first airborne and affected all the women on earth capable of menstruation (the science for this part is soft enough to spread on a biscuit, so don't think to hard about it), but since our young heroine doesn't menstruate, she's immune - a single girl among hundreds of male refugees. What's odd is that pretty much every single member of a crew of hundreds - minus, basically, the dozen named characters - absolutely hate her with a vengeance for being (a) female and (b) not their moms/sisters/lovers/daughters that they left behind.

This setup is so foreign that it seems extremely odd and alien. I've no doubt that in such a situation, there would be quite a large amount of resentment toward the surviving girl, but for basically *everyone* without a name billing to react this way is so anathema to human behavior, which is frequently varied. You'd think a good portion of the refugees would go overboard the *other* direction, adopting the girl with an uncomfortable fervor to replace the ones who were lost, but not one person in this novel ever seems in the slightest danger of doing that, and it's just...weird. The few "good" guys just sort of tolerate and accept the protagonist, for the most part. And while it seems like a small complaint, it's worth noting that the male reactions to the female protagonist in their midst take up at least half of the novel, so that's a good half that (a) isn't filled with zombies, and (b) isn't a very realistic portrayal of the variance of human emotion and is therefore distracting and odd.

Anyway, we plunge on. Obviously, what with all humans being horrible jerks and with most of the women on earth out of commission (minus the very young and the very old), it's just a matter of time before the raping begins, and probably enough said about that except that it's rather rare to see an author embrace the reality that the raping isn't going to be confined to male-on-female in a situation like this. The narrative glosses over without any gory details, but somehow this matter-of-fact handling of the horrors makes them worse, and I am forced to admit that of all the novels I've read where it seems humanity might do best to wipe itself out, Greatshell manages to make one of the most terribly convincing cases - most readers will be rooting for the xombies to win, before the end.

If I'm disappointed with "Xombies", it's perhaps because I feel a lot of potential was wasted. The titular infected only take up about a third of the novel, with the other third focusing on interim survival and humans being jerks, leaving the novel feeling a little weak on the actual horror. The infected are scary, and yet somehow hard to take seriously - they are bright blue (easy to identify) and they turn humans by kissing, rather than biting, them - a plot point that would *seem* to make it easier to prevent being turned, by handing out oxygen masks to everyone. For that matter, a lot seems to have been poorly thought out - the infected aren't put down easily, and even a loose arm or leg can continue to attack apart from the body, and while that sounds like an *extremely* fun plot point, nothing is ever really done with it, which seems very much like a Missing Moment of Awesome. There should be at *least* one scene where a peacefully sleeping person is killed by a rogue arm that made its way slowly through the air ducts, or something. And since half the xombies are intelligent, it's just plain odd that they don't rip their own limbs off in the face of destruction, to achieve this. Beyond anything else, despite these zombies being the theoretically impossible to take down with basic weapons, the humans manage to do so time and again, without any real explanation - we're just to assume that they easily and quickly bludgeon everything into a pulpy mass, and it just doesn't work well in the imagination.

I enjoyed this book overall, and I'll probably pick up the sequel, but the soft science and self-induced plot holes, the one-size-fits-all social commentary, and the slow pacing means I probably won't read this one again.

~ Ana Mardoll(less)

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Oct 31, 2009 Nancy rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: zombies, horror, post-apocalyptic-dystopia, abandoned, waste-of-trees

I expected a fun and gory zombie story. The submarine details were excruciatingly tedious and Mr. Cowper's overdone New England accent drove me nuts. I gave up after 100 pages.

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Feb 27, 2007 Rae Walker rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: No one.

Couldn't even get through it- and I love zombie stories. Horribly written, will spare no more words for this drivel. That's right, I called it drivel.

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Sep 27, 2012 Jenevieve rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: kindle-books

Agent X has swept across the world and devastated the human race. Starting out among the women of childbearing years who would turn blue and suddenly gain super strength, speed, and healing abilities, they then started making it a point to administer the kiss of "salvation" to anyone around them. Problem is, most people don't see being turned into something akin to a zombie as salvation.

Lulu and her mother have just driven cross-country in an attempt to find Lulu's biological father and have be...more Agent X has swept across the world and devastated the human race. Starting out among the women of childbearing years who would turn blue and suddenly gain super strength, speed, and healing abilities, they then started making it a point to administer the kiss of "salvation" to anyone around them. Problem is, most people don't see being turned into something akin to a zombie as salvation.

Lulu and her mother have just driven cross-country in an attempt to find Lulu's biological father and have been shut up in a house with little access to news of the outside world when Agent X hit. On their first foray out to get supplies and information, they are greeted by a strange new world and one that neither of them is prepared for. Lulu is eventually able to win free and find a man who may or may not be her father but is willing to use his resources to try and save her. Unfortunately, in this new world, nothing ever goes as planned.

I read this one in order to fulfill an A-Z book title challenge. It's pretty hard to find books that start with X and a friend recommended it so I figured what the heck. I'm going to preface this whole review with the fact that while my oldest child is a Zombie-fanatic, I am not. I pretty much only read zombie anything in an attempt to be able to communicate and have some sort of discourse with him. As a result, I have read a few phenomenal zombie books (Newsflesh trilogy by Mira Grant springs immediately to mind) and some that made me want to claw my eyes out and marching across the house to ask him why he would read such poorly written crap. This one goes in the middle. It had some fresh new perspectives on the tired cliches but frankly, I never really cared for any of the characters. The lead was constantly going from whiny and annoying to ultra-capable and then back again. The rest were basically names thrown in to play the roles needed to move her along. It's not a bad book but I wasn't gripped enough to be going out of my way to read the rest of the series.
(less)

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Jun 17, 2012 John Grover rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was a little bit disappointed in this book. Though I found the premise of the "Xombies" to be an original one and enjoyed them being different than what we all know in zombie mythology, there just wasn't enough of them or action to hold the entire book.

The xombies are fast-moving, blue in color and turn you to their rapture rather than eat you. A cool idea but where were they the whole book? Unfortunately the entire book is pinned into a submarine and all characters spend the bulk of it there...more

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Jul 17, 2010 Kelly rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book is not really about zombies, certainly not the " I want to eat your brain" variety so much as it is about one girl and her survival in a world taken over by individuals infected by Agent X. Agent X initially affects women. These women then turn on anyone else they can find and go on to affect thier victims. Lulu, a teenage girl, and her mother are initially unaware of what is going on. They drift from town to town and try to stay out of sight. Events take a very sudden turn though when...more

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Mar 08, 2010 Jonathan rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi, horror, fiction, apocalypse

In yet another apocalypse book, Xombies : Apocalypse Blues tells the story of 17 year old Lulu, one of the few women immune to the Agent X plague, which turns women into slobbering killers, infecting men along the way. Lulu, for reasons which remain unclear to the end, doesn't get infected and helps lead a troop to safety in Greenland(!). A meandering book, with too few Xombies and too many strange discourses on the rich and famous, is a book I'm surprised I finished.

Lulu leads a nomadic life wi...more

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Jan 09, 2010 Kim rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: first-reads, science-fiction, zombies

When I requested this book as part of the First Reads program, I was initially drawn to it by the combination of zombies and apocalyptic fiction, hoping it might be reminiscent of a recent favorite, The Forest of Hands and Teeth. However, Xombies is really a very different kind of book, both because it's science fiction rather than dark fantasy, and because it's apocalyptic rather than post-apocalyptic. Thus I expected to read a great deal more about how the zombie epidemic took place and less e...more When I requested this book as part of the First Reads program, I was initially drawn to it by the combination of zombies and apocalyptic fiction, hoping it might be reminiscent of a recent favorite, The Forest of Hands and Teeth. However, Xombies is really a very different kind of book, both because it's science fiction rather than dark fantasy, and because it's apocalyptic rather than post-apocalyptic. Thus I expected to read a great deal more about how the zombie epidemic took place and less exploration of its psychological impact on the survivors. What I didn't expect was how little the zombies (actually xombies) appeared in this novel, which is really less a tale of zombies than of running from zombies, if that makes sense. Which was still quite interesting, except when it was bogged down by details of military protocol and life on a submarine.

Lulu Pangloss has chromosomal amenorrhea; not only doesn't she menstruate, but she also physically looks much younger than her actual age of seventeen. Her childlike appearance has been used by her mother to manipulate men throughout Lulu's life, but the benefit of her condition really comes through with the coming of Agent X, a virus which changes women of childbearing age to violent, blue-skinned, flesh-eating zombies. The condition is then spread by these women to men; to her knowledge, Lulu alone is immune. When her mother is infected, Lulu must join forces with the man she believes is her father, and she travels by submarine to the remote north to escape the xombie plague.

This book was honestly a middle of the road read for me; I enjoyed parts, and other parts I didn't enjoy, though I wouldn't necessarily call them bad. I don't read a lot of straight science fiction, and my eyes tend to glaze over when I read the word "military," so when the older characters would discuss matters of intelligence and navy protocol, I got lost for a bit. I had a very hard time understanding how the effect of Agent X was so different on men and on women, and when Lulu's father said she was immune but not really, I didn't understand what it meant. When I do read science fiction, I expect that the science will be plausible if not possible, and I hope to understand it a bit. In Xombies: Apocalypse Blues, I didn't always, until the end----and then I didn't trust it. But I really liked Lulu, whose condition made her an unusually interesting protagonist, and who was both brave and thoughtful. I particularly liked reading about her treatment in all-male company, and enjoyed her interaction with the adolescent boys on board the submarine. I really enjoyed the exploration of gender issues, and would have enjoyed more of it, but I suspect there are readers who feel the opposite. It's just a matter of personal taste.(less)

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Dec 15, 2009 ♦Jennifer♦ rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: zombie lovers

Shelves: first-reads

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Who doesn't love a good zombie(or in this case xombie) story? I know that I do, and this one didn't disappoint.

In this book xombies are people who have been exposed to a virus that makes them blue, super fast, super strong, and leaches out all personality. It especially effects women who are past puberty. Because of this most of the people that have survived are men, children, and menopausal women.

One of the only exceptions is the main Character Lulu. She believes its because she has some chr...more

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Jan 12, 2010 Jak rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: post-apocalypse, first-reads

Xombies just didn’t do it for me I’m afraid. I found the writing zigged zagged around so much it was sometimes hard to follow and the descriptions of the nuclear sub were unclear leaving it hard to visualise.

Furthermore, many of the characters were flat and one dimensional (each and every one of the boys for example) with no emotional depth or significance. Worse yet this extended to the main characters (Lulu) father (Mr Cowper) who is often the driving motivation. This means very little connec...more

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Sep 29, 2009 Violet Crush rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: i-own

Xombies…What do I say about this book? I picked it up from a store because of the awesome cover and of course because it had Zombies. It does starts with some fun and gory zombie fighting that I was expecting from this book in the first place. The Zombies are created by a virus called Agent X which mysteriously affects women first.

17 year old Lulu and an old guy Mr. Cowper flee from their homes and go to a Navy base to find protection with the navy. Cowper is supposed to be Lulu’s father, the gu...more Xombies…What do I say about this book? I picked it up from a store because of the awesome cover and of course because it had Zombies. It does starts with some fun and gory zombie fighting that I was expecting from this book in the first place. The Zombies are created by a virus called Agent X which mysteriously affects women first.

17 year old Lulu and an old guy Mr. Cowper flee from their homes and go to a Navy base to find protection with the navy. Cowper is supposed to be Lulu’s father, the guy who ran away from her mother and someone whom Lulu had never met for the first 17 years of her life.

Circumstances lead to Lulu and Cowper running away together. But what they find at the Navy base is not protection but hundred’s of men and boys who Cowper suspects would be left behind once the Zombie defenses stop working and they invade the base as well. Cowper along with the men takes control of the Submarine which then sails (?) off to the Artic regions.

So far so good. I was really into the story until all the zombies were wiped out from the Submarine. But after that the Zombies kind of disappear for almost 200 pages of the book. That would have been okay if the rest of the book would have been good. But the Submarine descriptions were very tedious and I found myself very disinterested after that. I couldn’t picturize the descriptions and there was too much technical jargon. Honestly I skipped a lot of that section and it’s a huge section of the book.

The last hundred pages or so were really good but then again I was so bored with the middle section that I just wanted to finish the book. So I read the last 100 pages real fast which kind of led to me to missing out certain explanations of the Agent X that caused the Xombies. I found a few loopholes in the story but then again I said I skipped, so I’m not sure they were really loopholes.

The 2 stars are mainly because after the first 100 pages I lost interest in the book. Even the last 100 pages of the book could not revive my interest. But not wanting to be completely unfair, I will tell you what I liked in the book. I liked the writing style. The protagonist Lulu was a very street smart and intelligent girl whom I liked right from the start. The bond between father and daughter though not in the face was nicely developed. The Zombie sections, however few were awesome, so was all the action.

All I can say is that this book needs major editing, especially for the Submarine part.

This book is re-releasing this year with a different cover (which I don’t like much) and title XOMBIES: APOCALYPSE BLUES, with the sequel XOMBIES: APOCALYPTICON coming out in 2010, I think.

First posted at http://violetcrush.wordpress.com/2009...(less)

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Jan 04, 2011 Anastasia rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: personal-collection

As an avid zombie fan and reader, I was looking forward to this book. Agent X sounds like a virus that destroys the earth and turns the world into zombies. Plus giving zombies a clever little name like "xombies" seemed genius.

*a few spoilers to come*

The book began just as I'd imagined and hoped for: gore, family/friends zombie-fied, hopeless emergency broadcasts, and desolate American towns. However, about 7 chapters into the book turns up the cast on a submarine. You might be asking yourself,...more

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May 07, 2012 Elke rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels, horror, zombies, post-ap, review, thriller, sci-fi, sold

Not at all what I expected, Xombies is not your usual zombiecalypse story, but a mixture of zombie horror, science-thriller and coming-of-age story. Also, you get to know your share about life on a submarine. Starting with a typical outbreak scenario, Xombies soon leaves the well-trodden paths of describing post-ap fighting for survival. Instead, people find themselves isolated from the virus on a submarine, which should be considered a good thing. However, things can also turn bad without the e...more

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Oct 01, 2008 Kelly rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: horror, want-those-hours-back, pretty-cover-bad-book, beach-book, blinded-by-science, fiction, meh, narcissistic, oh-the-shame, set-the-feminist-movement-back, supernatural, spreading-stupid

Premenstrual hater. The premise of the story is this: One day all the women who were menstruating turned into blue zombies, went nuts and spent the remainder of the story sharing the wealth. X= female gene, get it?
Lacking. The tale has no imagination, significance, and continuity.
Offensive. It overflows with sexism, prejudice, and bigotry. Believe me people it’s pretty hard to offend me, yet this book did it with every turn of the page.
Trite. It tries your patience with impossible scenarios,...more

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Zombies Vs. Unicorns: I found a new zombie book	4	3	Jan 07, 2012 05:02pm
Message from Walter Greatshell	2	18	Sep 23, 2011 06:39am

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Xombies: Apocalypse Blues (Xombies #1)

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