Ezekiel Boone continues his shivery and wildly entertaining homage to classic horror novels with Skitter, the second book in his The Hatching series. There’s a reason we’re afraid of spiders…Ezekiel Boone’s astonishingly inventive debut, The Hatching, was a terrifying account of an apocalyptic week in which an ancient breed of carnivorous spiders woke from their 10,000-year slumber and caused … their 10,000-year slumber and caused carnage around the world. Then suddenly they started to die in waves, leaving shattered human survivors to take a deep, relieved breath, and begin to clean up the mess and rebuild their lives. But spider expert Melanie Guyer, and the crisis team the US president and her chief of staff has assembled around her, are pretty sure that this isn’t the last they’ve seen of these eight-legged predators. Something else is coming, something connected to the eerie stashes of glowing white eggs the spiders left in places like LA’s Staples Center–something very very bad.
Something that will test the capacity of the entire human race to survive.
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The first book in this series, The Hatching, was absolutely amazing. One of my favorite horror books ever. So I was super excited to read this one. Skitter starts up right where The Hatching ends. The spiders have gone dormant, and have laid their egg sacks everywhere. There are so many egg sacks in so many places, that it is impossible for us to find them all. But we are trying. Much of the book concerns hunting for them, and destroying them.
This second book felt almost like a place holder, until we can get to book three. The characters we were introduced to in book one are back. The characters spend the book trying to find out more about the spiders. And trying to find ways to destroy them. Some of the characters come together and join forces. We don’t see the massive spider attacks anymore. Just a few random attacks, mostly by the new spider with the red stripe. The ending of the book is great, and sets the stage for a big battle in book three.
For me, this book wasn’t as exciting as The Hatching. There wasn’t quite as much action, or as many scares. I did enjoy reading the book. The spiders are still super creepy, and at this point it is hard to imagine how we will win. I will definitely be reading book three as soon as it comes out. I am totally hooked on this story.
I received an ARC from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Awesome, creepy fear-of-spiders story!!
OH CHICKEN BISCUITS, this sequel was great!
The second in Boone’s Hatching (spiderpocalypse?) series is just as darkly humorous and terrifying as the first installment. Humor is so hard to write, but Ezekiel Boone sets the perfect tone with his absurd descriptors, jabs, sarcasm and perfectly outrageous banter.
The spider outbreak which began in The Hatching is proving impossible to contain, so in Skitter we watch the bigwigs in Washington deliberate and finally decide to go with the drastic Spanish Protocol, designed to be “a last-ditch way of stopping the spread of something that is inherently unstoppable”. In other words, “Operation Bomb the Crap out of Everything and Leave People to Fend for Themselves”. Will it work? Perhaps, but in the meantime those skittering little monsters are going to wreak some serious havoc and leave a lot of scientists scratching their heads.
The perfect balance of horror and humor is what keeps me coming back to this series. Every paragraph offers something newly absurd or ridiculous to enjoy. I was especially entertained by the narrator having to read the entire name of The Interstate 80 High Times Truck Stop and Family Fun Zone Restaurant and Gas Station Taco Bell Pizza Hut Starbucks KFC Burrito Barn 42 Flavors Ice Cream Extravaganza Coast-to-Coast Emporium over and over. On paper it’s not nearly as interesting, but read aloud it’s way better than any limerick.
As well, I really love how we don’t focus exclusively on just a handful of heroes in these novels. We move around the globe to see how the spider infestation affects everyone, from Marines in America’s ground zero of LA, to some guy exploring a temple in India, to a bored-to-tears group in the nicest out-of-the-way shelter I’ve ever heard of, to a family in a remote island in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. We follow a few main groups of people, for consistency, but we also get an up close and personal view from a variety of “redshirts (a Star Trek reference, if you are wondering) as they come face to face with egg sacs and hatching, skittering, biting arachnids.
I really enjoyed The Hatching so it was a no brainer to continue with the series.
Everyone breathes a sigh of relief. The spiders have died. Could it be over? Is it time to rebuild and get back to life as they know it? Not so fast.
Scientists and experts have been studying the spiders and the egg sacs discovered hidden across the planet. They find some horrifying indications that the worst is yet to come. When it all starts falling apart again it’s every man for themselves as countries are devastated and drastic measures are taken to contain the threat.
I was super excited for this book. I met some great characters that survived the first book and wanted to know what would happen to them. One group in particular, hiding in a luxury fall out shelter, were among my favorites. I could almost see them and had to laugh at some of things they said and did. And they had a dog too. Always love the furry companions. And worrying if it would be eaten by spiders sure added to my worries about the stories outcome.
Even though the book had me jumping from one place to the next and one scenario to the next, it wasn’t hard to follow and I enjoyed the scientific parts. The only thing lacking was spiders. I wish there were more attacks. Sure, there were some, but I missed the endless hordes of spiders creeping and crawling, unstoppable and hungry.
I didn’t realize the series didn’t end with Skitter. There’s an ending of sorts but lots more to be told. I’ll be waiting for what comes next.