Breeding Ground (Sarah Pinborough)

I had mixed feelings about this book.

The creepiness and overall tension was done excellently. Pinborough is very vivid with the downfall of the women, especially Chloe. It started with the unexplained fatness, even though she hadn't eaten in a week. Then it increased to the bulges on her body moving under the skin. When she stocked the fridge with liver and other animal organs, it was getting pretty creepy. Then when she ate it, Pinborough really captured the disgust of it so well. As the grotesqueness of the story strengthened, so too did the tension. You knew something was wrong, but you didn't know just what. First person POV was perfect for this book because we only got to know things as Matt did. And he didn't know shit. When the fetus hit the floor, you pretty much knew anything was in bounds for Pinborough.

The aliens, or whatever they were, were done extremely well. Their description was built over time, getting just a few bits every now and then, teasing the reader, until you had a good understanding of them. One complaint I had though was not having a much better picture of them (what they can do and where they came from) by the end of the book. But I'll talk about that later. The widows were excellent monsters: giant translucent spidery creatures with banks of red eyes, telepathic powers, disease inducing bites, and who knows what else. They reminded me a little bit of the aliens from Aliens, the movie. Maybe they are easier to kill, but I think they are going to prove to be a bit more cunning, which makes them potentially that much worse. We know very little about the black male widows, and that's a shame. I know there is a second book, but the first book needs to answer some things. But I really liked these monsters, and Pinborough did an excellent job in describing them, and their by-products. The gooey translucent spider webs were an awesome touch to the creepiness factor, and the same kind of translucent goo that came out of people over time after bitten was also way cool. An excellent monster, to be sure.

I did have some issues with the book though. For one, Matt was a tool. I wanted to like him, but he just wasn't someone I could sympathize with. The big turn off for me was how he claimed to be so in love with Chloe, and really, kinda proved it at the beginning of the book. I bought that he was a good guy. But after Chloe died, he was banging Katie like three days later. He blamed it on how the world had turned upside down or whatever, but I'm sorry, that excuse rings hollow. I don't know that it was all on Matt either. I think Pinborough herself let me down there. Matt is inconsistent. At least from what I could tell. He was not the same nice guy who started the book. I don't think his change was natural, and I don't think it could be blamed on the catastrophe that happened. People's true colors come out when the hard times hit, and I don't think Matt's true colors were in the ballpark of some kind of lustful playboy. There were three women of age in this book, and he had all three of them. I didn't think that was his character, especially given the short time line between them all. I was very disappointed with this aspect of the book because it made me not trust him across the board.

While I'm talking about Matt and the women, I was also really surprised at a rated X scene in the middle of this rated R novel. Not like offended or anything, but, was the full blown description of sex with Katie really necessary? It got pretty darned detailed, and I'm not sure what it added to the story. That part had me scratching my head.

I had a few logic problems. Why did the dog go to their protected base? How did it know to go there? How did it know humans were there? Why did it sit in front of that gate for so long? I thought maybe the widows were somehow controlling it, but no. It just happened to travel all those miles to wait in front of a gate with no humans around that it could know of. Didn't make sense.

I didn't believe Rebecca would have ran in front of Nigel to protect him from a mercy killing so he could suffer dying via his widow-inflicted wounds. I'm personally glad that he did die that way, but I don't believe it was in Rebecca's character to do that. I think Pinborough isn't in touch with all of her characters, to tell you the truth. She establishes them well, but goes against their apparent natures just to feed her story line.

And what about the end where Matt and Rebecca choose to just go ahead and leave the base to travel to Edinborough on their own? And George decides to go back down by London on his own? Call me stupid, but the last time they traveled, in a much larger group, they got their asses handed to them. The first night, the widows destroyed their vehicles. Dan got bitten. Shit hit the fan. But now by the end of the book, we're just supposed to believe they can go on their own like that?

And this brings me to my biggest issue: the ending. Or lack thereof, to tell you the truth. This book did not end. It felt like a chapter ended. There was no climax or resolution to the story. We still don't know how the widows came about (they talked about hormone enhancement in food.. ha!... but even that lame theory wasn't proven in the book) or really, what happened. I know there is a sequel. Whoop de doo. I need some kind of resolution in the first book to call it a first book. Not a first half of a book, which is what this was. I don't know if I will read Feeding Ground or not. I want to know the why, but I don't know that I trust Pinborough to give it to me.

It was a hell of a ride, but endings like this one kinda piss me off. If all you want is creepiness, horror, and gore... this book is for you. If you actually like a structured story that builds to a logical ending, I'm thinking you might want to pass on this one. It started off so promising...