These little creatures skitter around, rarely troubling humans, who almost always obliterate every eight-legged blob of flesh that appears in their vision. On a personal note, I recently smashed a hundred-year-old milk glass lamp, one of the only things left to my wife from her mother, in order to smash a spider with the rolled-up TV Guide. My wife forgave me, as we both have arachnophobia, and yes, the web-weaver died.
Boone thrusts humans into a plague of spiders that can strip a human of all flesh in thirty seconds. While cities, especially on the West Coast are under forced military quarantine and China has already obliterated most of itself with nuclear bombs to eradicate the beasts, all to no avail. The president of the United States must make the ultimate decision; how much of America can the government abandon or even blast into oblivion, as collateral damage, to save the rest.
Boone takes us on a whirlwind trip from continent to continent as everyone makes the decision on how to either destroy the wee beasties or save themselves from attack and then dumps us into our own oblivion to wait on the third book in this trilogy. I have never felt so uncomfortable reading a novel but anticipating the next one, knowing it will creep me out and give me nightmares, so much!