Zero Day by Ezekiel Boone Review

A couple of years ago we reviewed The Hatching, a title about spiders attacking humans and eating them. A lot. 12 months on Skitter joined the series, outlining how the spiders had started to die off, but leaving various egg sacks dotted around of various sizes and levels of activity. Zero Day is, as you’d imagine from the title, the point when everything kicks off. Huge queen spiders bursting out, strange new varieties of the spiders that seem to pick and choose their prey, and an American government torn in two by working out just how to deal with the threat.

In terms of how the book pans out, it’s a two sided story. It’s still exciting, there’s no doubting that. The last half of the book passed in a blur of late bedtimes, slightly burnt meals and occasionally ignored family memers, such was the determination I had to find out just how things ended. Were there still going to be spiders hanging around in an uncertain future? Were they all going to be beaten? Was mindkind itself going to be run into the ground?

In the end the excitement built to something of an anticlimax, and while it was a pretty decent ending in terms of the outcome, the final moments of man vs spider could have been far more drawn out and action filled – as it was the whole affair seemed to end quite suddenly.

But that said, this is still a very decent series of books. I’d put the first book as my favourite, followed by Zero Day – Skitter seemed to be mostly about setting up the final book and didn’t have the same excitement as the others. But if you’re after something which might creep you out a little and make you take a second look at a spider when you find one in your bedroom, you can do much worse than picking up a copy of these.