S.P.I.D.A.R.

By: Bryan Alaspa

Narrated by: Robert Keesecker

The town of Whittier is isolated in Alaska, and the people all live within towers once used by the military. The tourist season is over, and winter is on the way. Then, a body washes up on shore. A body that says it's from the government facility across the sound at Esther Island. With a storm coming, the citizens of Whittier have to deal with this on their own. They put the body in the basement of the towers, but their doctor wants to find out what killed this man. Was it a disease? How dangerous is it? Then, the horror begins.

©2018 Beacon Publishing Group (P)2018 Beacon Audiobooks

People Acting Stupid

I know people acting dumb is a hallowed feature of most horror to the point that it's become a cliche (don't go into that dark basement) but surely there are limits and this book pushes most of them.

From the doctor who thinks dissecting a corpse infested with an unknown parasite in an essentially closed & vulnerable community (isolated Alaskan tower where residents mostly live indoors 24/7), to the Coast Guard leader who continues to search a government facility working on top secret weapons research even after discovering dozens of dead bodies, to the people who just stand and stare while the spiders take them over....well the author mentions that certain traits are desirable for the occupants living in this most isolated of Alaskan communities, i.e., wanting to live off the grid or escape a bad past but he forgets to mention the most important...that your shoe size should be higher than your I.Q.

Ok that's an exaggeration but I had to listen to the book in short intervals to work off my annoyance at the dumb things the characters were doing. If you can get past that, this book is not bad. The pacing is suspenseful, the s.p.i.d.a.r.s are interesting and, really, this is just the kind of techno-thriller book I like. I only wish the characters behaved a little less like lambs lining up for the slaughter and more like intelligent humans.

The narrator is competent but he has an oddly chipper delivery for this sort of book; more like what I'd expect in a children's story than a horror novel.

On the Plus side

On the plus side the story is pretty fast paced. There’s not chapters of character development that leads no where. The concept for the plot is pretty old hat right up to and including the evil military types who knew everything was going bad and let it happen. Some of the characters seem central to the story yet go no where. They seem to just be filler to lengthen the book.

Get out now before you buy this book

This was a boring book filled with idiots doing things that didn't make sense. In addition to being idiots, the characters were totally uninteresting. I would not have cared if they all killed each other. Nothing about this was scary or even remotely entertaining. The narrator was mildly interesting, but only in the sense that his upbeat performance was totally incongruous with the supposed mood of the story.

There were multiple issues with logic in the way situations were presented. Characters would say things like, 'all evidence points to' such and such, when literally none of the evidence showed that. I question the reasoning skills of whomever decided to publish the book this way.

There are so many great books on Audible, but this is not one of them. I advise you to run away from this page right now and never return. Don't make the same mistake I did.