'Feeding Ground' – Sarah Pinborough (Leisure Fiction)

Page Count: 310 Pages.

Well, yesterday did its level best to deny me any reading time but I sure showed it who was boss. Me that's who, I was the boss ;o) After having enjoyed Matthew Edge's adventures through the web strewn landscape of 'Breeding Ground' (review Here), I wasn't go to leave it too long before reading the sequel so as soon as I'd finished with work, I ordered myself some takeaway and settled down for an evening's reading. While you're here, let me tell you all about it.

London streets that were once filled with pedestrians, tourists and shoppers are now clogged with thick webs and dead bodies. Spidery creatures straight out of a nightmare have infested the city, skittering after their human prey, spinning sticky traps to catch their food...

A few desperate survivors have banded together, realizing that their only hope for survival is to flee the dying city. Their route will take them through wrecked streets, into an underground train station. Only too late will they discover their deadly mistake... Their chosen tunnel is home to the hungry creature's food cache, filled with cocooned but still living victims. Instead of escape, the group have run straight into the heart of a feeding ground...

I don't normally pick up a sequel so soon after reading the first book, there's always that danger that your review is just going to end up sounding the same as the first one and my blog isn't nearly good enough to get away with it ;o) When it comes to giant spider action though... I couldn't help myself; the first chance I got, I was straight into 'Feeding Ground' and didn't put it down until I was finished. And it wasn't just because of the giant spiders either...

From where I was sat, as good and enjoyable as 'Breeding Ground' was, 'Feeding Ground' is a much more assured piece that really engaged me. We’re not focussing on one character’s point of view here, the action is spread out across a wider cast and this means not only is there more happening but there’s less time for the likes of me to get all hung up over character foibles that don’t sit well. Not that there’s any of that anyway, not here, as we have a cast who are fully focussed on the apocalypse at hand, either as a matter of survival or as means to a power grab. It’s all going on here and it all keeps the plot moving in the right direction, punctuated with ‘jump scare’ moments of terror as we’re reminded that London really belongs to the spiders now and they are keen to eat whatever is left.

And those spiders… While ‘Breeding Ground’ was about trying to establish what the spiders were capable of, ‘Feeding Ground’ chooses to concentrate on them as pure killing machines and I thought the book was all the better for it. It really emphasises that long term questions may well be important but they may never be answered as the short term need to survive is such a pressing concern, given what nasty bastards these spiders can be. And that’s not including the ‘crack spiders’ that even the white spiders aren’t keen on, they are properly vicious and make for some chilling moments across the book.

The finale is a little bit ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ but is no less hard hitting for that and I enjoyed the open-ended nature of the ending. You have to end a book somewhere but this is clearly an apocalypse that is going to run and run. And given what happened at the end of ‘Breeding Ground’, I’m not sure I wanted to see this group encounter that at first hand. They made it and lived happily ever after, of course they did… (ahem)

It's been a while coming but I’m so glad that I finally got to read both books in order, it’s been a chilling journey but in the best way. And ‘Feeding Ground’ ended up being the best way to sign off on it all. ‘Leisure Fiction’ is no longer a thing, and hasn’t been for years now, but if you do come across these books on your travels, pick them up before someone else does 😉