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Source: http://www.playbackstl.com/

Jill’s life is fairly ordinary and boring. Like so many of us, she wakes up and goes to a thankless job, then sits on the couch with her boyfriend Steve and watches hours of senseless television…that is until one night when she comes down with a nasty case of zombiism, suddenly leaping from the couch and biting into Steve’s skull with every intention of eating his brains. Steve survives Jill’s cannibalistic attack, and she snaps out of her zombie trance in time to rush him to the hospital. Steve, of course, wants nothing to do with Jill and harshly boots her from his life. She then loses her job and the luxury of her cell phone, which cuts her off from the ability to seek comfort from her two closest confidants, her Mom and her friend Amy, leaving Jill all alone in the world with no idea of her future.

Eating Steve is many ideas in one. It’s the story of a lonely girl starting over and meeting new friends. It’s about the droning negative and demeaning images our media presents to us and how it affects our state of mind. It’s about dealing with the loss of loved ones and learning to make it on your own, making the tough decisions that transition you from adolescence to adulthood. But mostly, it’s about taking chances. All of these elements are set against the impending spread of a worldwide plague that is turning everyone into brain eating zombies, plus the side story of an organic farmer who has beetles eating up his orchard. The only thing that can save his livelihood is a pesticide made by a big mega corporation, but to use it goes against all the philosophies of his life as an organic farmer.

The artwork of J. Marc Schmidt (Egg Story) is unassumingly great. He draws in a simplistic, comic strip sort of style, yet his images convey much action and emotion, using over-the-shoulder and high angle shots to great effect. He never wastes a panel either, making sure each one has a purpose and function to the story.

Eating Steve is certainly the sweetest little zombie book I’ve ever read. Schmidt tells a very realistic coming of age story while using the idea of a zombie and a beetle plague to symbolize the ugly, deteriorating world happening around the characters. Schmidt does a great job of telling his story through the dialogue and actions of the characters, completely avoiding narration to bring the characters to a more personal level. Schmidt’s purpose is to show that no matter how unexpected and drastic changes to your life can be, there is no reason to implode, that we must keep moving forward and not linger on our past mistakes, ending a book with a horror-filled beginning on a very positive note.

Source: http://carlfootprint.blogspot.com/
When you read the title of the novel, Xombies, the subject matter is very clear. Xombies is a novel about Zombies, or the walking dead. As horror novels go, this one is a prime example of the now more popular Zombie genre, and is not quite as scary as it is thought-provoking. Zombie novels always have a reason for the walking dead including Necromancy, Aliens and viruses. Xombies are created for the latter reason, a virus called “Agent X” (quite the cliché name) which at first infects only mature woman. ‘ “Honey?” Her look was dreamy, detached. Unbalanced. “Something weird is going on” ’ (Greatshell Pg. 4) The Xombies have a great need to feast on the flesh of the living and soon most people on Earth are infected. The main character is a seventeen-year-old girl named Louise (Lulu) who is supposedly immune to Agent X because she has “Chromosomal Primary Amenorrhea” which is a real condition that suspends a woman’s menstrual cycle and makes her appear half her age. Lulu has to survive hordes of Xombies and team up with teenage boys onboard a nuclear submarine to ensure the survival of the human race. As if the Xombies are not enough, many fellow humans are prime antagonists and Lulu must face human despair, desperation and greed while living in a post-apocalyptic world filled with cannibalistic monsters. Lulu encounters strange things and people in her travels (Pakistani Beatles cover band anyone?) and thus the story is very interesting but sometimes slightly hokey.

Xombies are not unlike George A. Romero’s popular depiction of the walking dead, but yet they are different because they are fast and slightly intelligent to boot. This is a change from other walking dead literature that describes Zombies as slow dumb dead humans. Xombies are even more interesting than regular Zombies as they have a higher purpose that is exciting to find out about. Xombies are technically made of

Walter Greatshell might be (and probably is) a submarine aficionado because of the great detail of the inner workings of a submarine which he includes in his book about the living dead. In fact, it does seem odd that Lulu ends up in a submarine of all places! Authors must have their indulgences, and it makes for a more interesting read.