The book jacket says, "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 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 creatures' food cache, filled with cocooned but still living victims. Instead of escape, the group has run straight into the heart of a ... FEEDING GROUND."
My biggest problem with Sarah Pinborough's "Feeding Ground" is from this blurb on the cover. I realize that it was most likely written by someone on the editorial staff, but I found- after reading 310 pages- that it was inaccurate. To be honest, I was quite intrigued to be taken through those devastated London streets filled with wrecked cars, bloody remnants of battle, and larger-than-life spider webs. Unfortunately, this scenario took up only about ten pages of the book. But I was still drawn in by the idea of London survivors groping around in the dark, with stealthy spider-like creatures lowering down on them from above. Yet this segment was even less than ten pages. What the cover blurb should have said is: "A large cast of morally reprehensible characters think about their hierarchy of crime and drug use, while their supporting characters seem even less meritorious than they, leaving- by perspective- the protagonists more relatable."
I was expecting a good amount of action and I instead got a good amount of backstory and internal monologue about building a slumdog crack empire in a shitty London neighborhood. I won't take away from Pinborough's ability to write- she was evocative, original, and quite talented. But I suppose I was fooled by the description of the novel. Another gripe with the cover blurb is that it claims a "few desperate survivors have banded together," when, in fact, this was minimal. There were two main groups of characters: The bad guys, a small contingent at the head of the Crookston crime syndicate, and the good guys, the trio of teenagers who were hiding from the bad guys so they weren't executed for nearly testifying against them. The only "banding together" occurred in the beginning, when an autistic boy joins the teenagers simply because they knew each other from school and when three other characters- introduced more than halfway through the book- were thrust into the acquaintance of the teens and the autistic boy. The group consisting of the bad guys never seemed to band together at all, instead tending to implode within themselves, as I suppose criminal organizations are prone to do in times of anarchy.
The real travesty in this novel is that the main antagonist- the race of spidery creatures which had jumped to the top of the food chain- were so little encountered. They were incredibly unique creatures that I thought would create some incredible action segments. They were, of course, very spiderlike, all of the obvious characteristics present. But aside from being giant spiders, they had suckers along their belly which was only minimally mentioned and could have been more properly utilized. Also, they had a communal memory and consciousness, communicating with each other by telepathy and true empathy. This could have spawned some amazing attack scenarios, but unfortunately it was one more missed trait. Aside from the brunt of this race, the Whites, there was a number of outcasts, the Squealers, who were slightly smaller, colored differently, and weaker in the telepathic sense. This was because they had been born to crack-addicted hosts, rather than normal ones. The Whites and the Squealers seemed to be natural enemies, though nothing came of this until the anticlimactic 1/2 page "last stand."
Also, another race of monsters was introduced at about the 3/4 mark... a swarm of huge rats- about the size of cats- that I thought would be a sort of Chekov's Gun. A cavalry of super rats attacking the Whites and the Squealers to give the protagonists just enough time to escape in the climax. Unfortunately, these rats were briefly shown to us twice, then left without conclusion or explanation. Their existence in the novel could have been omitted entirely without altering a single plot point.
All in all, I rate Sarah Pinborough's "Feeding Ground" a 6 out of 10. Although it moved slowly, I loved the race of spiders and only wish I had been shown more of them. If there had been less moments of speculation and more of what the cover blurb described, this book would have been a 10 for sure. I look forward to reading another of Pinborough's novels, but I think this time I will skip reading the description on the back to keep my expectations low.
The PS Zone: Pinborough's dialog was incredible. When reading the character's dialogs, I never felt I was reading at all. They spoke realistically to themselves, without hokey phrases or suspect wording. However, if you aren't up to date on your UK slang, you might want to brush up. Local color was a large part of the vocal realism.
Stay Scared.
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