A review by trupti
Xombies by Walter Greatshell

2.0

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/2009/09/30/xombies-by-walter-greatshell-for-r-i-p-challenge/