Reading, for me, is entertainment and an escape from the real world. But it can also inform and stretch the boundaries of the life I live.
I feel so conflicted, because I loved this unrepentantly cheesy horror story about a mutant rat colony swarming up from the depths and taking over the city on so many levels, and yet the slightest critical scrutiny makes the whole thing fall apart. It’s a classic case of good storytelling over structure and substance. As an eventually very accomplished author’s first attempt at a novel, it’s very good, and I forgive it most of its flaws. I mean, how can I give a book fewer than four stars when it prompted me to talk about it to my dogs as I read, saying things like, “Oh, good, here’s a new character, is he going to be rat-food or rat-conqueror?”, and “A train! Are they going to eat a whole train-full of people!?!”.
I read this book for the Booklikes Halloween Bingo 2019, for the square Creepy Crawlies: Books with bugs, snakes, spiders, worms and other things that slither, scuttle or crawl, includes viruses and other parasites.
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