The Hatching A Novel by Ezekiel Boone

The Hatching
A Novel
Ezekiel Boone
Atria Books
Pub Date: Jul 5 2016 

I was intrigued by the description, "The world is on the brink of an apocalyptic disaster. An ancient species, long dormant, is now very much awake." The ancient species referred to are spiders. Personally I do not have acrophobia. I think tarantulas are cool. I prefer not to be bit by a spider or walk through one of their webs but they are not the stuff of my nightmares. I was expecting a horror novels with spiders. What I got was spiders as the horror, which I guess they are if you do not like spiders.

The premise involves a new species (or possibly more than one species) of spiders appearing all over the world within a few days. The first ones are in Peru and hitch a ride to the United States on a private jet. At the same time, they pour out of a mine in China in such quantity that the Chinese government drops a nuclear bomb on the area. Some of the Chinese spiders hitch a ride on a container ship and crash into Los Angeles. Most of these spiders are eating all warm blooded creatures in their path, leaving only bones behind. They are appearing is such quantities that they are described as waves of black masses overtaking everything.

The human characters in this book are less interesting than the spiders. The FBI agent, President, White House Chief of Staff and NIH arachnologist (studying the uses of spider venom in medicine) made no connection to me as the readers. They had few redeeming characteristics. The FBI agent was the most sympathetic but barely. The spiders appear and the main characters try to survive and find a solution to stopping the spider apocalypse. I found myself cheering for the spiders, which I do not think it what the author intended. 

I love horror. I love the apocalypse genre. I love original stories, which admittedly this was. But it just really did not do it for me.
The ending of The Hatching leads me to believe it will be the first in a series. I will skip the rest of the series.

​I received an advanced review copy of The Hatching from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.