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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
You already know what to expect,
By Brandon Blankenburg (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Spiders (Paperback)
Hordes of flesh-eating spiders threaten to engulf England while biologists and the army race against time to stop them. What more can be said? Most people who are looking to buy this are already fans of this sort of thing so no actual review will steer them away. Anyways, I liked it because I like B-horror nature-runs-amok stuff and the writing is pretty good (despite the spiders constantly being referred to as insects) and I've got the sequel, "The Web", on its way along with some of the author's other books: "Parasite", "Night Killers", "Devil's Coach-horse" AKA "Black Horde".
4.0 out of 5 stars
"When the train crashed and turned over the passengers were spilled out like broken dolls.",
By Mark Louis Baumgart (Michigan, USA) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Spiders (Paperback)
"Spiders" was one of a whole bunch of nature goes berserk books to come out during the mid- to late seventies, and they always seemed to make better books than movies. In these types of books, nature hates you, and your death will be described in all its realistically graphic and gory detail. Cool.
Like all of Lewis's books that I've read so far, "Spiders" starts off with a bloody death. In this case it's the retired Dan Mason, who is fixing up his new cottage in Kent, and is dreaming of his future garden and his life after a long productive career. It is not to be however, while gardening he uncovers a new type of spider, as his house is right over their nest. His nasty death starts a chain of events that will almost destroy Great Brittan. The spiders are mobile eating and killing machines, and they are killing all that stands before them as they swarm across the landscape towards London. And as they swarm, we are introduced to spider expert Alan Mason, the novel's protagonist who is the son of Dan. As usual, one of Lewis trademarks is having a two tiered storyline. The first is having the novel's protagonist on the search to identify the novel's problem, and trying to find an answer to fight it. In this pursuit this time around, Mason is joined by his wife Louise, fellow scientist Peter Whitley, and police inspector Neil Bradshaw. The other part of his trademark is that Lewis interspaces his storyline with a never ending series of character vignettes involving the novel's victims. And while there aren't as many vignettes here, Lewis does well with the few that he does do. A particularly good example is the young Grant family, which is caught in the line of fire by the spiders. Richard Lewis was the pseudonym of British thriller writer Alan Radnor, of which I know nothing, but he is not related to the current Richard Lewis that has recently wrote a number of recent young adult novels. I don't know what Radnor originally did for a living, but he has the eye of a good newspaperman when it comes to creating people, especially in his vignettes, as his people really come alive. These novels were written for a buck, but they were excellent thrillers anyway, and we are lucky to have them. Lewis continues with his, at times annoying, "foreboding of imminent doom" type of writing ( ". . . he was doing this or that, but soon it wouldn't matter, he would be dead.") that seems to appear in all of his books, at least the ones that I have read so far. Having lived through several world wars and suffering through some very bad times, foreign authors have a tendency to not candy coat the effects of a bad situation. So, when people, of all ages die in Lewis' horror novels, it's never an easy death. On the other hand, the British cover sux, the American cover for the Signet version doesn't. This was a very good example of the pre-computer age horror, and it did well enough to spawn a sequel called Web, The which would also have Alan Mason in it, but as a minor character. This review refers to the Hamlyn paperback version. I have reviewed the following Richard Lewis books for this site: Devil's Coach Horse Night Killers Rabid Web, The
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