REVIEW: Skitter

Skitter
Author: Ezekiel Boone

I am afraid of spiders....or anything that even looks like it might be an 8-legged creepy crawly. When I was little, I was bitten by a poisonous spider. The bite required a trip to the ER and a nice chunk of tissue removed from my leg. Needless to say, arachnids moved to the top of my Ahhhhhhhhhhhh! list.

So, for me to read and absolutely love a book series about flesh-eating spiders....the books have to be good! Skitter is the second book in The Hatching trilogy by Ezekiel Boone. In the first book, ancient spiders that have been dormant for a very long time suddenly begin decimating the world. With the ease of worldwide transportation in the modern world, the spiders soon spread to every continent. They can also lay eggs inside the bodies of living humans who spread them without knowing they are carriers.

In this second book, the original wave of spiders has died, but egg sacs are everywhere. In the United States, the military is trying to contain a possible second wave. The president is faced with some very tough decisions. Her advisors recommend using nuclear weapons as China did to destroy areas with heavy infestations of egg sacs, but others come up with other ideas, such as a weapon using sound waves to kill the spiders. With the discovery of mysterious giant egg sacs in scattered places around the world and changes in behavior of the living spiders, scientists aren't sure what is going to happen next....but they know it won't be good. The spider infestation is far from over as some thought when the first wave died off....it's changing. Can the human race fight back and survive?

This book is definitely the middle novel in a trilogy. It has some great action in it, and shows the responses to the catastrophe around the world. Plus there is some great character and plot development. But, it's definitely a bridge between the exciting first book in this series, The Hatching, to the final book, Zero Day. Skitter brings into focus the aftermath of the first wave of spiders and the decisions that were made to protect people and destroy the spiders. It's quite apparent that those efforts failed....I mean how do you effectively stop the movement of millions of flesh-eating spiders who lay millions of eggs in any hidden dark space they crawl through? There is no way to kill every spider or destroy every egg. An unwinnable scenario creates desperation....a situation that requires making horrific choices.

I enjoyed this book. It has lots of action, suspense and creepy crawly spiders! I'm definitely ready to find out what happens in the final book. Luckily, Zero Day awaits on my e-reader!

Ezekiel Boone has a new book coming out in December 2018, The Mansion, about a family who moves into a house equipped with the most intuitive and advanced computer ever designed. Bad things happen, of course.  I already have the book on my wishlist. I enjoyed the first two books in The Hatching series so much that I'm definitely on-board for Boone's new book.

On to Zero Day! I can't wait to find out how this series ends! Do your worst, Boone! I'm ready!