Beware the Spider Babies

This week for class we read the novel Breeding Ground by Sarah Pinborough, and my reaction is somewhere between "?" and "??????"

Before I get into the issues I encountered with this book, I would like to point out the things that worked for me as a reader. First off, Pinborough does have a knack for building tension. She does this well during several scenes, such as the widows smashing the survivor groups vehicles and leaving them without cars, all the suspense Nigel brings with his asshole, murderous behavior, the suicide scenes, and when the black spider emerges from John's mouth -- all good stuff laced with intrigue and tension.

Another positive would be that this novel is a quick read and the reader can get absorbed in what's happening (for the most part), and Pinborough does provide that just enough optimism at the end to give readers a little bit of hope. However, I actually expected more at the end than me just guessing what happens to the remaining characters. But even so that wasn't one of my major problems with this book.

Let's talk about our protagonist, Matthew Edge. Sounds like a superhero name, huh? Well let me assure you Matt Edge is not the type to save you from any of your perils. If you're a good-looking woman, he'll probably just bang you, think you're bitchy when you ignore him, and get you pregnant with his spider babies. Oh, but don't worry my fragile female friends, Matt Edge is here to give you comfort in his manly man ways, as long as you act like the fit, feminine, weak creature he needs you to be so he can keep his ego in tact.

Matt Edge is on the run from spiders who want to kill/eat him, has just witnessed his girlfriend Chloe who he proclaimed as the love of his life die brutally while birthing his very own spider baby, and yet when he runs into this totally bangable chick named Katie, it's like he can breathe again. *Cue sunshine and rainbows blooming over the webs of demonic spiders*

Oh but wait there's more! Later when the survival group goes looking for a chemist for Dave's unfortunate spider bite, they run into totally bangable chick number 2, Rebecca. "A beautiful deaf girl" as Matt puts it. Even after poor Dave (who was a good character, by the way, so I'll give props to Pinborough for how he was written), has to get his arm amputated and Katie asks Matt if Dave's okay, we get the lines, "I didn't look at her, but stared ahead at everything and nothing, not wanting to see her beauty just now" because obviously after your friend gets infected with an alien spider bite and you just witnessed the sawing off of his arm, you're going to get distracted by that totally bangable chick, right? I mean I know when I'm on the run for my damn life while the world is collapsing around me and my loved ones are dead, I am going to make keen notes of all the fly, available people around me instead of oh I don't know, notes on how to KILL THE GIANT SPIDERS TRYING TO KILL ME. Trollololol.

But who cares? Chloe got super fat and lumpy, hatched her spider baby, and is dead, so whatevs, right? *snort*

Oh and the sex scene with Katie later where Matt says, "Maybe this was my way of once again dominating the female species on behalf of all my fallen comrades. Whatever the reason, behind my eyes I could see only red and my body burned just to take her. This wasn't making love. This was pure, human, animal sex." LOL WTF. Ah, a book written by a woman that uses women as wombs for evil creatures and shows men as either uncontrollable horny dumbshits or insane killers of women (Nigel), is just awesome, right? Haaaa *lights self on fire*

But there were some good characters. George is the old, wise, father type and very likable. Chris is the crazy scientist type, and is kind of useless, but harmless. I think there were some other decent guys thrown in with the crazies that followed Nigel, but honestly there were just so many stock characters that I had trouble keeping up with them and who was who after awhile. 

And I was distracted by Matt Edge being King Idiot. After he knocks up Katie and she starts showing the exact same signs Chloe did when she was pregnant with the spider baby (drastic mood change, wanting to be alone and sleeping a lot, the weird smell thing), he chalks it down to her just "being bitchy" and goes about his ways. I'm not sure how this idiot ended up banging three chicks in this novel, two of them being the last "normal" women we even encounter after the spiders start attacking, but wow, dude must have had moves that I missed or something.

I know the focus of this class is on the monsters, but holy hell, I couldn't even keep my attention on the translucent spider beasts because I was too busy eye-rolling at the over-the-top blatant gender stereotypes, Matt's complete puddle of a brain, and holy stock characters batman. I liked Rebecca a lot until she was reduced to nothing but a vagina for Matt to send his sperm up once again. And then he has to hold her and hide her precious eyes from the black spider crawling out of John's mouth because clearly after everything else she's seen she must be protected at all costs by this man to save her. Sigh.

I was waiting for them to tell us it was virgin blood the spiders were getting sprayed with by the army at the end. My theory was virgins couldn't house the spider babies and once Matt deflowered them, then they could, but that never really came into question in the text.

Not that much of anything was really explained though. The explanation for the spiders growing inside these people was genetically modified foods? Are you freaking kidding me? I would have taken a crashed spaceship of spider aliens over that complete crap answer. It was barely tossed in there along with some "science experiments gone wrong" and then we're focusing again on Matt trying to keep it in his pants, and the oh god have to save the baby cliche, again.

The only thing that really gave me satisfaction was Nigel's slow, agonizing death because the bastard deserved that. Everything else was just exhaustively bland. I did not get the answers I wanted about the spiders origins and why the "special" blood hurt them. I'm also convinced Matt carries some weird DNA and makes women have spider babies, so I'm basically waiting for the cycle of Chloe and Katie to continue with Rebecca, but I guess we're not meant to think that with that oh-so-hopeful ending.

So overall, not a book I would read again. My eyes hurt from rolling them so much. The spider monsters weren't that threatening to me, and most of it just left me disappointed. But hey, if you're into mutant spiders mixed with stock characters sprinkled in sexism, maybe this is the book for you.