I’m going to start with a warning in this review, one that I suspect will make you either continue reading with interest, or stop now. OK, here we go: this one’s about spiders. THOUSANDS of spiders…
OK? Still reading? Good. Because as far as apocalyptic horror stories go, this one’s really good.
The trick of a good page-turner is that, even when you think you know what is going to happen, you want to keep reading. This was one of those reads – I read it in a weekend, not wanting to put it down until I knew what had happened.
Even if you haven’t read the back of the book, the title pretty much articulates what you’ve got. As is the form in such novels, we begin a number of seemingly unconnected incidents around the world. We start in the rainforests of Peru, where a local guide finds he encounters more than he bargains for. In typical travelogue fashion we then travel to Minneapolis USA where FBI agent Mike Rich finds that a crashed passenger plane holding an American billionaire has something else unexpected.
It’s a fine set up. Details of the various characters are briefly given as we discover what is happening. Of course, in such a tale we expect science and society to save us. On the side of science we have spider-expert Professor Melanie Guyer to try and save us by creating a solution to this burgeoning crisis. In India, Doctor Basu at the National Information Centre of Earthquake Engineering investigates strange data patterns from around New Delhi. There’s also a military option, of course, and there Melanie’s ex-husband, Manny, is the chief of staff to President Stephanie Pilgrim, where the nuclear option is being seriously considered. In China, they’ve already done it, in a decisive move worthy of John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos.
Meanwhile, the Chinese decision leads to various responses. Survivalists such as Gordo & Amy, in the isolated town of Desperation, Nevada, collectively go to ground, fearing further actions. Lance Corporal Kim Bock, Marine Corps, shows us the effect on the military of a call to arms and blockade, when she finds herself having to use her skills against civilians.
As the momentum of these disparate events develops, the plot eventually moves all of these characters together to deal with the effects and hopefully eradicate the problem.
The origin and the purpose of the spiders and their motive for their appearance is not explained, although there are hints as to all of these things. They seem to be ancient, they behave more socially than spiders typically do and they’ve been here before. As expected with the B-movie plot, the latter part of the book deals with us dealing with them when they appear. .
When we finally meet the big bad spiders properly, the invertebrates are as horrifying and as scary as you would expect them to be. Not only are they fairly large furry creatures, determined to eat you and drink your blood, but they travel en masse and there’s often a lot of them. They really want to kill us. There are some jaw-dropping scenes when the spiders get to cities…
I can see The Hatching very much as a TV series or a film, like Arachnophobia or Eight Legged Freaks. (but let’s not go too far by referencing Big Ass Spider!…) It’s fun, it’s surprisingly scary and it motors along in short chapters like a Michael Crichton novel. Like Crichton’s books, there’s a little (but not too much) internal monologuing, and a distinct lack of superfluous details.
This was a book that gripped me from the off. I liked the global perspectives, which showed that it was not just an American crisis, and many of the characters I felt I knew surprisingly quickly. What happens to them and the world as a whole kept me turning the pages, and I was pleased to find that although there was the occasional plot coincidence there were no major lapses of logic that often mar such a premise.
Whilst there are minor issues, there is no doubt that the choice of adversary is an effective one. Normally spiders don’t really affect me, though I would not claim they were my best friend. Generally I consider myself pretty inured to such matters. What works here is that they are quite horrible, being part of a formless mass with a purpose and seemingly unstoppable. Parts of it are quite skin-crawling. It is quite a trick in such books, knowing when to give all the gruesome details and when to hold back, and Ezekiel does it very, very well.
My biggest problem with the book is the ending. Having rattled through the set up and the establishment of the characters at an extraordinary pace, just as events begin to look like they are going to happen, they don’t. It’s not so much a cliff-hanger as a headfirst collision at speed into a brick wall! After such a wonderful beginning, the feeling is that the book is incomplete, an initial draft of something yet to be finished. I guess it shows that the book has worked, that I desperately wanted the story to continue and as such it could be seen as a success. However, it will annoy some readers.
In summary, despite its rather sudden ending, The Hatching is a great page-turner, delivering what you expect, and supremely well. It’s one that’ll get you looking more carefully at that stray invertebrate you’ve got running around in your garage. Definitely not one for arachnophobes!
The Hatching by Ezekiel Boone
Published by Gollancz, July 2016
978 1 473 215177
304 pages
Review by Mark Yon
Not sure I can read this one. Spiders in normal size scary the bee-hee-bee-jee-bees out of me and a horror novel with a cliff hanger? Hmmm…not sure how that works…
I’ve heard it is part of a series! Can’t wait to read what happens next!
It is part of a series, Alex. And judging by the end of this first book, with such a cliffhanger ending, there had to be a sequel. Glad to read you enjoyed it as much as I did.