Spidas in da Hood!

FEEDING GROUND by Sarah Pinborough (2009 Leisure Books / 310 pp. / mmp)

It's been 3 years since Pinborough's BREEDING GROUND, a creepy-crawly thrill ride loaded with some of the more vicious over-sized arachnids ever to grace a horror tale.

In this sequel that's as good as its predecessor, much of the action centers around a dread-locked gangsta named Blane who, with his childhood buddy Charlie Nash, are using the spider-apocalypse as a means to build their own empire in the London underground. Another group of survivors (school kids and their teacher) hang back in the shadows, waiting for a clear break away from the spiders AND the drug-dealing, prostitute-leasing gang.

In BREEDING GROUND, women were being used as incubators for the spider's offsprings; toward the end of the novel, men began to suffer a similar (although way more gruesome) fate. For some reason, Pinborough doesn't explore this in FEEDING GROUND and instead focuses on the female metamorphosises But, she gives the story a wickedly fun cult-film quality by having Blane keep his former ho's-turned-spiders high on crack, hence leading to his ability to control them. As silly as that may sound, it actually works, and makes Blane (with his crack-crazed mutant spiders by his side) one of the coolest antagonists I've come across over the past few years.

The claustrophobic climax in the London tubeway adds much to the creepiness factor, and there's plenty of room left for a third segment (although I hear the author is heading into a more mainstream thriller series, so I won't hold my breath). For now, FEEDING GROUND offers a lot of good old-fashioned "monster movie" fun.