PissWeakly Reviews: Skitter / Ezekiel Boone

Saturday, October 21, 2017

Skitter / Ezekiel Boone

Skitter

(Spiders #2)

by Ezekiel Boone

horror, disaster

read in October 2017

rated 6/10: read to pass the time

This is a book which is written to be a blockbuster... Not too heavy, not too light. Plenty of action, plenty of destruction, plenty of human interest...

Human interest? A cast of thousands! And yes, I just mean the humans.

Do you like these characters? No? Well, not to worry, I have plenty more... Do you -- the reader -- need a character to "identify with" ? Somewhere in this huge cast will be just the right person... Which is annoying, really.

Good point: the characters are distinct enough to tell apart. There is no confusion. Bad point: there are a dozen on more parallel stories -- it's hard to really care about any one of them. Though perhaps that's the point?

This is a story of world-wide disaster. It is told through the eyes and actions of a relatively small number of characters. (Yes, dozens of named characters. But there are millions more -- named and unnamed -- being killed.) The characters are there as examples of the range and variety of the disaster.

The characters also provide a variety of approaches to battling the disaster...

Remember when disasters such as alien invasions or massive attacks of the common cold were solved by a very small group of characters? Usually it was the brilliant old scientist, his attractive granddaughter and the capable young man.

In Skitter there seem to be ten different parts of "the solution" coming from ten different groups of people. More realistic, perhaps. Though I'm surprised by the number of people who live in remote communities yet have ready access to powerful people in key government positions...

In fact, come to think of it... No, no need to think about it: From the word go this book is unbelievable! But still enjoyable :-)

It's horror-lite. Tedious in parts -- too much of the character-building breaking up the actual plot development. But easy-enough to read. Easy enough to put down, too. Which leads me to my regular complaint:

It's not obvious -- until I start reading -- but this is book two. Worse yet, book two does not finish the story. I would normally put that complaint right at the top of my review... but...

Skitter is lightweight entertainment. The characters are introduced and quickly placed in context. It doesn't really matter where the spiders came from, in fact, I suspect that book one could have had a lot of tedious "discovery" of the threat. This book leaps straight into the action!

And book three? Does not really matter...

Skitter is a snapshot of a disaster. Nice people surviving -- or not. Not-so-nice people either causing mischief in a minor way -- or being wiped out of the story. There is development towards a conclusion but the conclusion is not important.

This is an easy-to-read book with no power to grip. Enjoyable, yes. Would I like to read about phase three of the disaster? Yes. If I never read it, will I miss phase three? Not really.

Not a great book. But a good book for reading to pass the time.