Scan barcode
iguana_mama's review
1.0
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.
moreadsbooks's review
2.0
Probably 2 & 1/2 stars. I liked this at the beginning, lots of scary zombie (er, xombie) goodness. However, the explanation for the virus stinks & the dialogue is terrible. I get that the guy has a Boston accent, I don't need it to be constantly spelled out. "Ya gatta look inta my haht!"
lauriereadslohf's review
2.0
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 blue, she escapes with an older male neighbor and they're on the run.
This book started out with a lot of promise but soon became one big chase scene with lots of male posturing thrown in. I didn't care about any of these people and found the old guys accent distracting beyond all measure. I found myself skipping pages at a time and eventually gave up, read the end and put the book back up for trade.
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 blue, she escapes with an older male neighbor and they're on the run.
This book started out with a lot of promise but soon became one big chase scene with lots of male posturing thrown in. I didn't care about any of these people and found the old guys accent distracting beyond all measure. I found myself skipping pages at a time and eventually gave up, read the end and put the book back up for trade.
xterminal's review
4.0
Walter Greatshell, Xombies (Berkley, 2004)
Fairly standard zombie novel, when it's a zombie novel, but it very quickly becomes something else; the zombies are just a prop to get our core group of survivors onto a nuclear sub, where the real core of zombie novels-- the interplay between the survivors-- takes place. Not much chance to actually see too many zombies once they're on the sub, so some might consider this a bit of mismarketing. Me, I liked it well enough.
The plot: the survivors of a global plague of zombies (or xombies, as the case may be) caused by a virus called Agent X (you see where the term “xombie” comes from) force a ragtag band of Naval personnel, submarine yard workers, and the daughter of the sub's commander onto a nuclear sub headed for the icy wastes of the extreme north, where, it's presumed, the xombies will all be frozen. Roughly two-thirds of the book takes place on the sub, with the other third split between before-sub and after-sub.
The thing that's likely to make or break this novel for you-- assuming you're past the whole “it's not really a zombie novel” bit-- is the narrative voice. Normally I'd have likely found it grating, as the narrator, and many of the survivors with whom she has the most contact, are all eighteen or under. And boy do they sound like it. Yet there's something oddly charming about it in this case, with its badly-out-of-date (even in 2004) slang and devil-may-care attitude. This is important, given that the bulk of the book is nothing but this. I'm not entirely sure why it worked for me, but it did. The plot is solid enough to keep the pages turning, though it is derivative of a number of other works (the blurb that calls the book “a mix of 28 Days Later... and Lord of the Flies was written by someone who didn't have to look too hard). In short, it's not something that's going to break any boundaries, but if you're just looking for a good, solid thriller, this will fit the bill. *** ½
Fairly standard zombie novel, when it's a zombie novel, but it very quickly becomes something else; the zombies are just a prop to get our core group of survivors onto a nuclear sub, where the real core of zombie novels-- the interplay between the survivors-- takes place. Not much chance to actually see too many zombies once they're on the sub, so some might consider this a bit of mismarketing. Me, I liked it well enough.
The plot: the survivors of a global plague of zombies (or xombies, as the case may be) caused by a virus called Agent X (you see where the term “xombie” comes from) force a ragtag band of Naval personnel, submarine yard workers, and the daughter of the sub's commander onto a nuclear sub headed for the icy wastes of the extreme north, where, it's presumed, the xombies will all be frozen. Roughly two-thirds of the book takes place on the sub, with the other third split between before-sub and after-sub.
The thing that's likely to make or break this novel for you-- assuming you're past the whole “it's not really a zombie novel” bit-- is the narrative voice. Normally I'd have likely found it grating, as the narrator, and many of the survivors with whom she has the most contact, are all eighteen or under. And boy do they sound like it. Yet there's something oddly charming about it in this case, with its badly-out-of-date (even in 2004) slang and devil-may-care attitude. This is important, given that the bulk of the book is nothing but this. I'm not entirely sure why it worked for me, but it did. The plot is solid enough to keep the pages turning, though it is derivative of a number of other works (the blurb that calls the book “a mix of 28 Days Later... and Lord of the Flies was written by someone who didn't have to look too hard). In short, it's not something that's going to break any boundaries, but if you're just looking for a good, solid thriller, this will fit the bill. *** ½
More...