A new virus called "Agent X" has spread across the planet like wildfire, it's airborne with regards to women, but men have to be either killed or "kissed" by another infected person, a "xombie," to get it. Most the world is dead or infected, roaming about with blue skin and black eyes, unkillable and intensely fast and strong. Their only urge is to spread their disease.

Our main character is Lulu, a teenager who has a medical condition that keeps her from hitting puberty. As a side-effect, she might be the only female between thirteen and menopause left in the world. Looking like a twelve-year-old and using metaphors that would make Dennis Miller scratch his noggin, she tries to make the best of bad situation after bad situation.

This may have been the most upsetting book I've ever read.

At first I found Lulu a little hard to believe, but as the story went on I really loved her. It's very rare that I'd feel this much for a character in a story, but at the end I really felt like crying. Through most the middle I felt like murdering.

Seriously, if the characters in this book were real, I'd stalk them and kill them. I'd tape it in my own collection of snuff films, and I'd watch them over and over, the worst parts where they suffered the most. Over and over. I'd have a screen-cap from it as my wallpaper right now!

What I'm trying to say is that I hated these motherfuckers with a drooling passion that often made me put the book aside and just fume about it. Much like when I read the news, actually. A little more, because the truth is I don't really care about anyone on the news. People hurting Lulu really piss me off, though.

Compared to the sexual brutality that took place in Brian Keene's The Rising or the longer version of Stephen King's The Stand, this is nearly Disney. However, when someone rips Lulu's pants off, it disturbed me as much as anything I can remember reading.

The story is kind of odd. I've heard lots of negative talk about this book, BQueen was nice enough to send it to me after deciding it wasn't readable. An editor of a horror magazine told me it was the only zombie book out there that wasn't good. That's a bold damned statement, right there, I guess he didn't love Lulu so much.

I did, though, but I can see how people have a hard time with the book. The main characters are great, all distinctive and hard to dismiss as unreal. The problem is that there are lots of times in the reading when you'll wonder if this book is called Xombies or Xubmarine. A whole lot of the story takes place on a sub and we're given a whole lot of sub and not too much xombies for a long while in the middle.

At times it also seems a little too much. There were times when I questioned the realism of many of the character's behavior, although a chapter later made me decide it made more sense than I'd thought. There will be times when you have to say "oh come on!" though, just because it keeps piling on poor Lulu.

It took me a while to finish Xombies though, mostly because it did become a drama/suspense book in the middle, luckily it turned back into horror just in time to pull me back in. It's a really good story, and the last few chapters had me fascinated and made me want to sodomize the bad guys with a pipe until they bled out. I enjoyed it, though. It's a good book if you ride it out.

7.9 out of 10 underdeveloped girls I still wanted desperately