THE HATCHING by Ezekiel Boone [2016]
It’s not
often that I manage to obtain, read and review a book within the same month as
its release. Yet I was excited by the sound of THE HATCHING, and after seeing a
full page advert for it in a magazine, I just had to get hold of it. I’m a huge
fan of the horror sub-genre of Creature-Features, or Animal Horror, or Nature’s
Revenge, or whatever you want to call it. I’m a collector of the pulpy books
from the 70’s and 80’s, the ‘In the tradition of The Rats...’ books, with
titles like SCORPION, DEVIL’S COACH HORSE, SLIME [jellyfish], BLIGHT [moths],
LOCUSTS, WORMS, BATS OUT OF HELL and so on. Books where the titular animal
emerges from somewhere in their thousands and goes on to eat, suck, dribble,
flap or skitter about the country, causing havoc and death, before being neatly
wrapped up in 160 pages. They’re formulaic, samey, and sometimes not very
well-written, but there is lot of love out there in horror land for these
garish old paperbacks. So, when I heard about THE HATCHING, a new
heavily-promoted hardback from new writer Ezekiel Boone [a pseudonym for New
York writer Alexi Zentner] which has got some great reviews, it was great to
hear of a resurgence of interest in swarms of flesh-eating critters.
THE HATCHING
has a simple plot. All over the world, at around the same time, an ancient and
unknown species of spider is hatching from long-dormant eggs. The creatures are
on an incredible speed of evolution, and very, very quickly they lay more eggs
[in living hosts] and before you can roll up the newspaper, there are literally
millions of the little buggers, fast emerging like flowing rivers in China and
India, and eventually worldwide, and presented to the world as short
video-clips taken by onlookers and on constant repeat on the news channels.
Boone takes us through this experience by introducing a large cast of
characters, including the first female president of the USA, military soldiers,
doomsday survivalists, FBI agents, graduate students and a science professor
who is an expert in all-things eight-legged. The action moves quickly, from
viewpoint to viewpoint, and the action creeps up until the whole planet is
being menaced by the flesh-eating things. I really
don’t like spiders, and some parts of this book gave me the genuine shudders
and made me look around the room and jump at bits of fluff and dust moving
about the place. Also, because I’m an idiot, I read this book at the beginning
of spider-season in the UK, when the female spiders, grown fat and juicy,
venture out of their nests to find a mate. Splatter shoes and vacuum cleaner on
standby!
THE HATCHING
was a really fun book, an arachnaphobic horror thriller and a very quick read,
and I finished it in a couple of days. It has a great idea and the writing is
spare, lean and to the point, and in general, I just had a good time with this
novel and heartily recommend it to others. It’s the sort of quick-paced
thriller that will get snapped up by a film company and I wouldn’t be surprised
if we saw a film in the next year or two.
This is an
enjoyable book and I urge any fan of the sub-genre to read it but I want to
highlight a few minor flaws that I felt let it down a little. Firstly, it is a
little slow in getting going and Boone introduces a lot of characters, each
with deep and complex backgrounds, within about 50 pages, so that sometimes
characters don’t quite have enough space to develop and feel like truly real
characters [and one character, unfortunately named Fanny, I just couldn’t take
seriously at all]. All this is interesting, well-written exposition, but I just
felt it was getting in the way of the spider carnage. And as for the
spider-carnage, I felt that lots of the action sort of happened off-screen, a
little like Gareth Edwards’ recent GODZILLA movie, building up to the action
but then cutting away to something else. There’s still plenty of interest and
action here, just some of it seems to be told instead of shown, and the book
shies away from truly horrific description, making it more of a horror-themed
thriller than an out-and-out horror novel. In fact in some places it feels like
it’s trying to build a WORLD WAR Z sort of vibe, chronicling a worldwide
disaster as it enfolds, but it’s not completely successful. The book’s major flaw
was what I thought was an unsatisfying ending; the book comes to a climax of a
sort, but it’s just really a lead-in to the forthcoming sequel SKITTER, and I
left the book feeling slightly disappointed, while also eagerly waiting for the
next book; there isn’t much closure in THE HATCHING.
But,
seriously, these things are minor quibbles, and I think some of my
disappointment at the ending was simply because I wanted more, which is not
such a bad thing. Some reviewers are
calling this ‘the horror book of 2016’, and they may be right, but I personally
haven’t read enough new books to bestow that accolade. What I will end with, is
THE HATCHING is a fast, enjoyable and just plain fun book, and I’ll be watching
Ezekiel Boone’s future career with one eye, while keeping the other firmly
fixed on all the dusty places behind the couch and in the brickwork. 8/10
NOTE - I have festooned this review with a selection of similar Nature's Revenge titles, simply because the paperback covers are so damn good. In the creepy-crawly stakes, I think Richard Lewis wins the web with SPIDERS, THE WEB, DEVIL'S COACH-HORSE, THE BLACK HORDE and probably some others I've forgotten. And I've popped THE RATS in, too, as that was the book that started the whole thing going. And Guy N.Smith's BATS OUT OF HELL. Just 'cos it's cool.
