seriousfic

So I just finished reading Xombies, not a misspelling, by Walter Greatshell. And I’d like to say first, Xombies? Is that all it takes to be a new spin on a cliché, changing one letter? That's one step away from Zombiez. What’s next, weaewolves? Alihns?

So the books follows Lulu, a 19-year-old with a chromosomal disorder that makes her appear adolescent (I can see you bracing yourselves, don’t think I can’t). She and her pointlessly crazy mother are tracking down Lulu’s deadbeat dad when the zombie apocalypse hits. This time it’s caused by Agent X (I wonder what would happen if you added that to sugar, spice, and everything nice? The Zombiezuff Girls?). Agent X, aside from being the variant on the T-virus that wears its baseball cap backwards, is an airborne virus that only affects women. They then give it to men by kissing them. That’s right… Zombie Cooties (better title, that).

Because of her condition, Lulu is immune. You see, only women that menstruate become these violent psychopaths that can’t be reasoned with or…

By the way, Agent X was created by a huge multinational corporation (stupid huge multinational corporations, what have they ever done for us?). So, how did it escape from the lab? By hiding in the one place decontamination measures couldn’t get to it. Some woman’s uterus. Which makes me wonder how she was handling that virus.

‘Okay’, you may be saying to yourself, ‘this doesn’t have to be bad. A zombified take on gender relations with a psychosexual twist could be pretty cool.’ Nope! It’s the same tired take on man’s inhumanity to man and the evils of capitalism that dragged down Land of the Dead. And the last woman on Earth aspect only results in our narrator being threatened with rape, almost getting raped, almost being made a sex slave, and being desired by all the men who are too honorable to rape her. Forget the shotgun and chainsaw, this post-apocalypse needs a rape whistle.

And if you’re just here for the zombie action, forget it. There’s a little subversion in that Xombies (I can’t type that without thinking ‘Yo yo yo, where be my brains-izzle?’) don’t want to eat people, they want to ‘convert’ them to Xombie immortality, but they’re just fast zombies who kiss instead of bite. I think I fought those in Elite Beat Agents. Use peanuts, Lulu!

Now if you can get past the stupid bits like America nuking Canada and the Canadians gunning down refugees in retaliation… man, those guys are strict about not letting Celine Dion come back… and the are-you-sure-this-isn’t-a-black-comedy moments like the male cast being forced to wear drag for the benefit of their rich SOB captives… and the part where a Mystical Negro says that women are affected because the Inuits used to practice female infanticide and the souls want revenge, hey, thanks Inuits, way to bring about World War Z… I already mentioned the part where a woman’s couch was the carrier for zombitis… oh, there’s one part where the Big Bad is doing a speech about how nothing matters but survival and the ends justify the means and to illustrate this point, he literally disco-dances around to the song Stayin’ Alive… make it to the last page and they set up a new status quo and a new mission and it ends! Not one ounce of closure, it just stops.

What theme, exactly, was supposed to be so enthralling it just had to be further explored in a sequel? The scene where Lulu’s stripped naked or the scene where Lulu’s stripped naked? Because I haven’t seen this much uncomfortable fetishization of a ‘minor’ since I last watched a Victor Salva movie.

Unless the sequel is about the ‘Cool Britannia’ British tribute band instead of Little Miss SVU. Anyone who says “It’s the British Invasion!” while smacking people with an electric guitar deserves their own book.