This book was outside of my comfort zone for books. Not that I don't like a horror story every once in a while, but this was just something else. Let me tell you, the description doesn't even give you a peek into how disgustingly shocking this book is, but not that it's disgusting in a bad way, because I did end up finishing the book and really getting tangled up in the story. Just a warning though, it is disgusting and horrific and all the other things we love about the horror genre.

The main characters are two young adults, Trip, a boy who just wants to find a boyfriend and live the life he sees everyone else have, and Ree, a girl who was shipped from the mainland and has no problem finding anything she needs in a partner. The world they live in however, is much different than our own. After literal giants came from the sky, an infection took over the world and so did something called the Sex Wars. After that, people who contracted an insane sexually transmitted disease either died, or became a horrific amalgamation of a human body and an alien weapon.

Completely unlike anything I've ever read or watched, I was sucked in from the very moment I picked up this book. I had no idea that it would end the way that it did, and honestly I didn't even expect the middle of the book if we're going to be real here. Every turn the story took was a new and grotesque surprise. And I loved it. Appalling books like these are the reason that I want to read more horror, and I those horror books to be just as shocking and repugnant as these. Because that's what horror is really about, isn't it?

Overall, I really enjoyed the story of Trip and Ree living with the changes in their lives, and their bodies, and the world around them. They did what they thought was right no matter what anyone else said. I loved the descriptions of the world that they lived in too, from the weapons made of bones that fired teeth, the dried human organ armor, and the living human tissue that grew over the cityscape. I couldn't get enough of it, and even when I was disgusted and laughing to my friends about how awful the things I was reading were, I couldn't put it down. And that's exactly what I want in a book like this. Something that is really hard to do, this book was descriptive enough that it played out like a comic in my brain. I couldn't ask for more.

(Radioactivebookreviews.wordpress.com)

There was much to enjoy here, but I found I couldn't connect with it. I'd read more from this author in the future though.

In the world where Trip lives, sex is outlawed because it makes people ill. They get a disease called The Hallow which they die from. If you are caught having sex, you are recycled (horribly sacrificed in front of the town). Trip and other teenagers are at the age where they have urges and want to have sexual relations with others. In Trip's case, he wants to have sex with a new guy in town, Cron. He loses his virginity to Cron and yes, he contracts The Hallow. However, the Hallow effects everyone different, and Trip does not die, he begins to evolve into something he never imagined. He tries to escape his island of Truog and get to the mainland where he might be able to get help. Gaia, who knows the truth about The Hallow and what Trip is becoming does not want Trip to get away. She uses Cron and other creatures to track Trip and his friends down and try to keep him on Truog. I read a few reviews of this book on Goodreads before reading and I was not sure if I was going to enjoy this book, but I received a free copy from NetGalley and I wanted to live up to my side of the obligation. I read about 20% and almost gave up, I am glad I did not do this and kept reading. No, this is not a favorite book of mine and no, I cannot recommend this to everyone. There is sex, a lot of sex. Not always the physical act of sex, but there is a lot of sex. There is also a lot of gore, A LOT! If these topics do not bother you, offend you, make you nauseated, then give this book a read.

Weaponized: I would say it is heavy handed, but that hand is a penis

Let’s pretend Zac Thompson’s book ‘Weaponized’ = cookies. Based on the synopsis, I thought ‘these are going to be some pretty good cookies!’ But something went horribly wrong! What? Too many ingredients.

Flour, eggs, milk, salt, baking powder, water, oil, chocolate chips, raw beef, ketchup, chopped prunes, used contraception, snake venom, baby aspirin, cat vomit, and viagra. Under-baked on a open half dictionary covered in lard and spritzed lovingly with a potpourri essence of airbourne phallic juices..

These are not cookies I enjoyed.

Weaponized tried too hard. Here are it’s actual ingredients: Dysptopian universe, with the 1970’s recent enough to be mentioned; The Sexwars which caused trouble but are never explained; Outlawed fornication (but page 3 tells you it is a fraud); Skeleton warriors who fail to be interesting; Bone gun and their references always mentioning ‘bone bullets’; Biomechanical buildings which didn’t exist until after people go into veiny/anus/vagina subtunnels; Mutants non-existing until the anus/vagina subtunnels; Sleeping giant gods; Duplicitous Godhead/penisheads; Acid spewing penis arm guns; Teenage angst and borderline date rape; A rediculous clown painting.

All bad? No. There were many great elements. Unfortunately, they needed to be carved off to world build several books not be stuffed into one. Some sentences were inspired, but they were buried under layers of critically needed editing. It was a single overwhelming mess.

I would question any person who says it was well written and assume they didn’t read it or are giving lipservice to the author. Laden with spelling errors, poor structure, inconsistent story, a simple scaling back of complexity could have made this shine or allowed issues to be forgiven.

I would consider reading this author again if he were to fnd a way to balance his ideas with the works he is creating. I would not finish another book that is of the same quality presented here. There were A THOUSAND GREAT IDEAS HERE.. most of which had no business being inside a single cookie.

Care for more examples? Message me directly.

It starts to read like a commentary on our own society. The concept was fascinating and the writing started out good. Turning people into biological weapons via viruses? Not the bio weapons we’re used to, but literal weapons. But as so often happens when you bring political intrigue into a story it stars to get confusing. Who is Gaia and what does she really want? I realize that’s part of the story, but there are times when it’s hard to tell what’s going on. How did she really feel about what happened to Freydis? I couldn’t tell even after re-reading. And then all the biological stuff started to run together and get confusing, too. How did Frank and Seth fit in to this whole thing? Were they some sort of experiment? Or an accident? OK; they’re eventually explained. But a lot of this world is a mite confusing. World-building is sometimes helped with more (but not too much) exposition. I give it 2.5 stars, rounded up to 3 for the concept.

I struggled making my mind up on this book, on one level it was truly full of crazy ideas which were pretty hard to digest and took considerable time to understand. The novel is set where sexual activity is outlawed and the early thrust follows a gay teen who loses his virginity to another guy with a disease. Diseases can kill you. And sex can lead to execution. Before long a nasty rash turns into a gun morphed from flesh and the kid is a living weapon. It's loaded with pretty obvious cliques and metaphors for what's going on in the world today, but I struggled to follow it. I also found the majority of the teen characters to be pretty dull. But if you enjoy explicit body horror don't let me hold you back.

I just ...really don't even know where to start with this. It is somehow the weirdest and also most cliched thing I think I've read this year and ...the entire thing is just bizarre. Which I was kind of expecting but ...I was just Not Prepared. Like, at all.

I guess I was maybe expecting it to be a little bit more subtle? And that is definitely the last word I would use to describe this book. I mean ...the kid has sex and his hand turns into a gun - which is deliberately described as 'phallic shaped' like EVERY time it's mentioned - that ...leaks ...white ...ooze ...stuff ....yeah. And really it only gets more obvious from there.

Also it just gets plain weird and I feel like the author tried to pack too much stuff into one story. There's several different weird STDs [that actually ..aren't STDs??] that aren't ever really coherently explained and then [SPOILERS] it's also revealed that the island they live on is actually a huge decaying giant [presumably mostly to make them travel around in its ...intestines? at one point. Although honestly it's written more like a vaginal/womb thing OBVIOUSLY].

I'm sorry, I feel like this is not a very coherent review but it's not a very coherent book and I'm just kind of at a loss here. I feel like it was a good concept but everything just went overboard and then nothing really connected together so I was just left very confused. Also I thought that maybe the fact that the main character is gay was going to be ...more significant than it was. Like I thought his disease was going to specifically be a metaphor for AIDs or for gay people being ostracized or whatever but it was just all sex in general. And there was a specific disease that gay men got but it was more mentioned in passing than anything so ...I don't know.

Also the fact that I'm aro/ace might have affected my opinion a little bit. I mean I still read books with sex in them all the time and obviously I knew going in that this was going to focus on sex so I'm not against that or anything, but the entire thing was just like Imagine!! If you couldn't have sex!!! And how horny you would be All The Time!!! And I was just like ...mmm ...no???

I mean it was obviously supposed to be a commentary on how sex is viewed in the world - and probably specifically in America - and how we live in a society that tries to tell people not to have sex while simultaneously throwing it at them in advertising from every angle, but it just didn't land for me for whatever reason. I feel like this could have been great if it had been more coherent and also a bit more subtle but as is I'm just very confused mostly.

I realized I couldn’t finish the book when I noticed how down I felt every time I opened this book in the evening. It was a very unengaging and uninspiring read for me. And when I say “for me”, I totally mean it because I know people who will likely enjoy the book but, well, not me, I guess. The premises for the story were really good, though, so I think what I had a problem with was the style, not the story.