'The Web' – Richard Lewis (Hamlyn)

It feels like it should be a lot longer ago but it was only last month that I read Richard Lewis' 'Spiders', a book that was as relentless as the flesh-eating spiders it unleashed on an unsuspecting public. I'm not a big fan of spiders anyway so while it didn't do anything particularly new, what it did do was creep me the hell out (you can read my review over Here if you fancy it). As soon as I realised there was a sequel, that was it. I found a copy (thanks eBay!) and have spent the last couple of days finding out what happened next. You know what happens next ;o) Let me tell you all about it....

It is six years since Britain was crippled by a monstrous onslaught of flesh-eating spiders. Now at last, life is back to normal – more or less – but Alan Mason's recurring nightmare is that the spiders will return...

Angus McInne's grisly death is the first sign of a fresh tide of horror. For the spiders are on the move again, infecting their victims with a deadly poison.

And no-one knows where they will strike next.

Is there anything better than millions of murderous spiders on the rampage? Personally, I don't think there is. You've got the horror of watching people being eaten alive by spiders and at the same time, you get to cheer on the plucky humans who will eventually come up with some way of stopping them. Which made it all a bit of a shame then that 'The Web' proved to be a slightly lacklustre affair that didn't have the power of its predecessor.

'The Web' does everything that 'Spiders' did, just... not so well. This is mostly down to the books habit of constantly reminding us that it's a sequel and a lot of this stuff also happened in the last book. Which is fine but only up to a point; 'The Web' needed to go and do it's own thing, not hype up its prequel, it didn't seem like there was a lot of room for that given the book's urge to tell its read that it's a sequel.

And how many times did we need to be told something along the lines of 'but he didn't know just how bad it was going to get...'? The reader is basically being warned that something big is coming but in the case of 'The Web', the book doesn't deliver. There are plenty of spider attacks (and they are admittedly well drawn) but that's not what we should be getting if we're constantly being told that it's about to get worse. The book doesn't live up to the promise, that it makes itself, and is a pale shadow of 'Spiders' as a result.

'The Web' isn't a bad book (like I said, spider attacks are brilliantly done and if that's all you're after then you've found another winner), it just makes the mistake of tying itself too tightly to 'Spiders'. Not only this. 'The Web' doesn't seem able to take the next step that it spends far too much time promising to.

Having said all that, I'm a completist for things like this so I'm still glad that I gave it a go. If I'm being honest though, you could probably stop after 'Spiders' and not miss much. Oh well, onto whatever the next book is ;o)