The Hatching by Ezekiel Boone

A tech tycoon is attacked by spiders on a trip to Peru. At the same time, an ancient egg sac is discovered at a dig in that same country. Melanie Guyer, an entomologist specializing in spiders, has always been fascinated by the creatures and the opportunity to study a calcified egg sac that dates back thousands of years is the chance of a lifetime. But there's something very different about this particular egg sac - in spite of its age, it seems to be hatching. 

Meanwhile, a remote mining village in China has recently been nuked and the Chinese government is mum on the subject. But intelligence suggests there was much more to the incident and it's something involving a bug...

Readers, I, like many of you, hate spiders. With just one exception really - these super cool looking orb weavers. But I don't hate them as much as I hate roaches. And most of the reason I hate them is because they sneak up on you. And their webs are itchy and blech! So yeah, I still love Arachnaphobia and Sarah Pinborough's The Breeding and Feeding Ground hold a very special place in my heart as two of the ickiest creep fests I've ever had the extreme pleasure of reading. So you can imagine how utterly giddy I was at coming across Ezekiel Boone's debut.

The Hatching has all the hallmarks of a summer blockbuster read. It's quick and packed with tension and action, and of course killer spiders. Monstrous and gory killer spiders.

And it is a fun read. But it's first in a trilogy, which makes The Hatching feel much like a prologue to what should have just been a longer book. Even halfway through there were still characters being introduced, and with twenty pages left to go I wasn't sure there was any way the book would resolve at all.

Of course it doesn't really. It ends on a cliffhanger that makes it certain readers like me will snatch up the second installment, Skitter, as soon as it hits shelves next spring.

I can probably go on and on about what I would have liked to see in this read (more streamlining, less characters, and all three volumes in one book, mainly) and it would all be based on my own preferences. Which matter very little, to be honest. So in spite of all of that I'll simply state that this was an amusing and skin crawling read that may not blow you away but will certainly keep you entertained for the few hours it takes to zip through it.

And now I'll begin the long wait for the second installment.

Rating: 3/5