Zero Day

A mostly unsatisfactory conclusion to a middling series. I think this story would've been better served as one book and not three - there was way too much padding and way too many superfluous characters.

I normally don't read the third book in a series without reading the other two but this was next on my alphabetical list and ain't nobody got time to read 3 books about killer spiders. That being said, I really enjoyed this silly apocalyptic story. There were a TON of perspectives that got a little confusing at times but the characters were likeable and memorable. A lot of this book focused on the politics of the situation and the science of how the “Hell Spiders” worked. I don't know if realistic is the right word but the dilemmas the characters faced were believable and kept me on the edge of my seat. I really enjoyed how there wasn't a true “bad guy” because nobody really knew what the right thing to do was and everyone was just doing the best they could to save America.

I'm low key afraid of spiders (like most people) so the imagery did make my skin craw a few times. Picking up this book I thought the spiders would be giant, like kaiju size, but it was more about giant waves of millions of normal spiders with some giant queens here and there. I'm honestly not sure which would be scarier. The most disturbing element of the book was definitely the fact that half of the country was nuked and is now a nuclear wasteland. I was just imagining what that would be like and which relatives and friends I would lose (plus all the states I would never see).

My two main gripes with the story would be the Peru subplot and the ending. With the parts in Peru, I just didn't see the point in the characters. Pierre and Bea just bitched at each other the whole time and then Pierre got dumped by Julie in the end. They honestly served no major purpose to the plot. The ending I wasn't in love with because A. the “kill the queen, kill them all” solution was pretty cheesy and took away a lot of plausibility (they had me going with the explanation of hatching cycles and cicadas but this made them seem like robots instead of prehistoric creatures?) and B. the epilogue was very “Happily Ever After” cheesy with everyone marrying everyone and getting promotions etc. I'm not against happy endings or anything but considering what just happened to America I would expect a mourning period or something. Something a little more somber.

All in all this was a quick, entertaining read that I was able to zip through during my commute.

That was the third and last book from the Hatching serie and boy, that was fun! I love the characters, I love how they put their minds together to find a solution to the spidercalypse, I love how visual the story was. It would make an awesome tv serie, especially now with how good the CGI can be.

A tiny thing that I've liked less is maybe the ending. Not in itself, but how quick it happened. On the other hand, people had already suffered so much, so I don't mind that much that the big solution was found that fast.

Another thing is I would have liked to learn more about some characters' fate in the end. But I do like who died and who survived. In fact, I was surprised about how many survived. I've seen in some reviews that some would have like more deaths, but I'm happy that so many are still there. I do like happy endings. Now, for those who died: Both the preacher and the con man. They were a given. No tears on them. But I must say that I didn't predict Teddy's death (I was thinking more about Kim not surviving) and it caught me by surprise. It did made me sad, so that she was the only one to die in the core groupe was really okay for me. One small complain: the people that were with her should have honored her in the end. Like, presenting what she had filmed and given her some posthume award. I think that's my biggest disapointment.

In short, love that serie. I'll probably read other stories from that author one day. :)