Please note, Zero Day is a direct sequel to The Hatching and Skitter. You really need to be reading them before you read this book. In fact, don’t venture any further than this paragraph if you haven’t. Trust me. You don’t want to miss out on all that gloriously squishy goodness. It’s also likely this review might contain some spoilers. Consider yourself suitably warned! The world is on the brink of apocalypse. Zero Day has come. The only thing more terrifying than millions of spiders is the realization that those spiders work as one. But among the government, there is dissent: do we try to kill all of the spiders, or do we gamble on Professor Guyer’s theory that we need to kill only the queens? For President Stephanie Pilgrim, it’s an easy answer. She’s gone as far as she can—more than two dozen American cities hit with tactical nukes, the country torn asunder—and the only answer is to believe in Professor Guyer. Unfortunately, Ben Broussard and the military men who follow him don’t agree, and Pilgrim, Guyer, and the loyal members of the government have to flee, leaving the question: what’s more dangerous, the spiders or ourselves? I think…

Please note Skitter is a direct sequel to The Hatching and if you haven’t read that then there is a distinct possibility that this review may contain something akin to spoilers. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya! Tens of millions of people around the world are dead. Half of China is a nuclear wasteland. Mysterious flesh-eating spiders are marching through Los Angeles, Oslo, Delhi, Rio de Janeiro, and countless other cities. According to scientist Melanie Gruyer, however, the spider situation seems to be looking up. Yet in Japan, a giant, truck-sized, glowing egg sack gives a shocking preview of what is to come, even as survivors in Los Angeles panic and break the quarantine zone. Out in the desert, survivalists Gordo and Shotgun are trying to invent a spider super weapon, but it’s not clear if it’s too late, because President Stephanie Pilgrim has been forced to enact the plan of last resort: The Spanish Protocol. America, you are on your own. Last year I read The Hatching by Ezekiel Boone. I loved it. Horror has always been my favourite genre and I like nothing better than a bit of nasty, flesh munching evil. Fear of spiders gets a checkmark…

An astonishingly inventive and terrifying debut novel about the emergence of an ancient species, dormant for over a thousand years, and now on the march. Deep in the jungle of Peru, where so much remains unknown, a black, skittering mass devours an American tourist whole. Thousands of miles away, an FBI agent investigates a fatal plane crash in Minneapolis and makes a gruesome discovery. Unusual seismic patterns register in a Kanpur, India earthquake lab, confounding the scientists there. During the same week, the Chinese government “accidentally” drops a nuclear bomb in an isolated region of its own country. As these incidents begin to sweep the globe, a mysterious package from South America arrives at a Washington, D.C. laboratory. Something wants out. The world is on the brink of an apocalyptic disaster. An ancient species, long dormant, is now very much awake. My wife has a pet tarantula. I’ve told her on more than on occasion that it disturbs me. I find myself both terrified and fascinated by it in equal measure. I remember when it first arrived in our household, I used to have nightmares that it would somehow learn to escape from its tank, successfully open all the doors…