The Tombs, by Deborah Schaumberg ~ 4.5 Stars

Tags

Adventure, Historical Fantasy, Mystery, New York City, Suspense

Thanks to Edelweiss and HarperTeen for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Release Date: Available Now 

448 Pages

Synopsis: New York, 1882. A dark forbidding city, and no place for a girl with unexplainable powers.

Sixteen-year-old Avery Kohl pines for the life she had before her mother was taken. She fears the mysterious men in crow masks who locked her mother in the Tombs asylum for being able to see what others couldn’t. Avery denies the signs in herself, focusing instead on her shifts at the ironworks factory and keeping her inventor father out of trouble. Other than secondhand tales of adventure from her best friend, Khan, an ex-slave, and caring for her falcon Seraphine, Avery spends her days struggling to survive.

Like her mother’s, Abery’s powers refuse to be contained. When she causes a bizarre explosion at the factory, she has no choice but to run from her lies, straight into the darkest corners of the city. Avery must embrace her abilities and learn to wield their power—-or join her mother in the cavernous horrors of the Tombs. And the Tombs has secrets of its own: strange experiments are being performed on “patients”…and no one knows why.

I hope you all don’t mind, but this is going to be a shorter than usual review. I’m still battling health stuff, but I wanted to share how much I loved The Tombs. First, how gorgeous is that cover? C’mon. Aren’t your hands reaching for it just looking at it? I’m also thrilled to say that the story is just about as wonderful as the cover. It’s a perfect blend of history and fantasy, and Deborah Schaumberg does a fantastic job at bring gritty 1882 New York City to vividly to life. Almost everything works here, from the well-rounded, relatable characters to the marvelous world-building. The only reason why I’m not giving this a perfect 5 Stars is because toward the middle of the book the pace seemed to slow down a bit for a few chapters. Overall though, The Tombs is an absolutely stellar historical fantasy that I unhesitatingly recommend to fans of this genre. There’d better be a sequel in the works because that ending definitely left me wanting more!

 

Zero Day (The Hatching #3), by Ezekiel Boone ~ 3.0 Stars

Tags

Adult Fiction, Horror, Thriller

Thanks to NetGalley and Atria/Emily Bestler Books for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Release Date: February 27th, 2018

322 Pages

Synopsis: In the thrilling, nerve-wracking finale of Ezekiel Boone’s “hair-raising” (Parade) Hatching series, the United States goes to war against the queen spiders that threaten to overtake the human race forever.

The world is on the brink of apocalypse. Zero Day has come.

The only thing more terrifying than millions of spiders is the realization that those spiders work as one. But among the government, there is dissent: do we try to kill all of the spiders., or do we gamble on Professor Guyer’s theory that we need to only kill the queens?

For President Stephanie Pilgrim, it’s an easy answer. She’s gone as far as she can—-more than two dozen American cities hit with tactical nukes, the country torn asunder—-and the only answer is to believe in Professor Guyer. Unfortunately, Ben Broussard and the military men who follow him don’t agree, and Pilgrim, Guyer, and the loyal members of the government have to flee, leaving the question: what’s more dangerous, the spiders or ourselves?

 

They’re baaaaak! Yep. After causing all sorts of bloody, gory mayhem in The Hatching, and Skitter, those carnivorous arachnids, now known as “Hell Spiders”, are back for one more go round with the human race! Having enjoyed the previous two books I’ve been looking forward to seeing how Ezekiel Boone was going to wrap things up. Unfortunately, I wound up being a bit disappointed with Zero Day.

The problem I ran into was that there was no spider action until I was 45% into the book. Call me warped, but I wanted more blood, more gore, more spiders bursting out out of people’s bodies, more people getting eaten, more…well you get the picture. Instead, there’s a lot of bouncing back and forth between characters. Now granted, there was a lot of that happening in the other books, but there was also plenty of action which kept the pace moving. I wouldn’t have had a huge issue with this as I like most of the people, except Boone adds even more in this book. It was just too much. I didn’t connect with the newbies, and their stories took away from the trials and tribulations of the ones I cared about. Also missing was some of the sly humor that was part of the other stories.

At about the 85% mark, the final battle against the spiders and their monstrous queens begin. Finally, here was the excitement I’d been desperately looking for and it was just as fun as the previous ones. I found myself rooting for my favorite characters and was happy with the way everything played out and was tied up. 

While Zero Day wasn’t everything I had hoped it would be, overall the Hatching trilogy is one I unhesitatingly recommend to horror fans. There’s nothing deep and has no serious underlying message, it’s just fun. I’m still keeping my fingers crossed that this gets turned into a Netflix series, because done right, this would be awesome! Ezekiel Boone’s next book, The Mansion, is due out in December and I can’t wait to read it.