The Hatching
Ratings7
Average rating3.6
15
Ratings7
Average rating3.6
An astonishingly inventive and terrifying debut horror novel about the emergence of an ancient race of carnivorous spiders, dormant for ten thousand years but now very much awake. There's a reason we're afraid of spiders... A local guide is leading wealthy tourists through a forest in Peru when a strange, black, skittering mass engulfs him and most of the party. FBI Agent Mike Rich is on a routine stakeout in Minneapolis when he's suddenly called by the director himself to investigate a mysterious plane crash. A scientist studying earthquakes in India registers an unprecedented pattern in local seismic readings. The US president, her defence and national security advisers and her chief of staff are dumped into crisis mode when China "accidentally" drops a nuclear bomb on a desolate region of its own country. As such unsettling occurrences mount, the president's old friend (and her chief of staff's ex-wife), spider expert Melanie Guyer, receives a box at her lab at American University that contains an ancient egg unearthed at a South American dig. So begins The Hatching, the hair-raising saga of a single week in which an ancient, frighteningly predatory species of spider re-emerges in force. When the unusual egg in Melanie Guyer's lab begins to vibrate and crack, she finds herself at the epicentre of this apocalyptic natural disaster. Working closely with her ex-husband and his very powerful boss, she has to find some way to stem the brutal tide of man-eating arachnids.
Featured Series
3 primary booksThe Hatching is a 3-book series with 3 primary works first released in 2016 with contributions by Ezekiel Boone.
Reviews with the most likes.
It's not a bad book, but at the same time I'm a little let down. There were too many characters, too much exposition, and not nearly enough horror! I wanted something that would make my skin crawl and there was surprisingly little of that here. That said, the action picked up towards the end and left plenty of room for a more satisfying sequel. I think I'll probably end up reading on, even if I have some gripes about this first entry.
A few issues, but the ending (and setup for the sequel) were worth it. Review to come.
Imagine the first act of a zombie apocalypse movie, but replace the undead hordes with waves of carnivorous spiders. As the first book of its series, it sure felt a little exhausting setting up the slew of underdeveloped characters and various settings due to its globetrotting nature bouncing around. I'm hoping the sequel is far more action/horror oriented, as the best parts of Hatching were the descriptive segments detailing the spiders hatching within living bodies and eating their way out.
