Breeding Ground

Breeding Ground, written by Sarah Pinborough, did start out as a good contender for one of my favorites in this class. It was creepy, unsettling, and touched more on making me feel scared as opposed to the previous readings we've done so far (and some of the readings I've done ahead). It also touched on a rather terrifying topic- birthing something that you have no idea what's inside of you. The narrative does start out in an interesting way too, since the Matt's (the main character) wife, Chloe, is revealed to be pregnant. Given the title, the reader already finds themself questioning what exactly Chloe is giving birth to.

The suspense builds. Women become aggressive and fat; they eat raw meat and telepathically communicate with one another; Matt finds out it's not just happening to Chloe but supposedly everywhere in the world. It isn't too much longer that the women give "birth" to the giant, white spider-like creatures dubbed 'widows'. 

This, unfortunately, is where I started to become a little less scared and a little more curious. I wanted answers as to what these spider creatures were. Thankfully one of my questions was answered- had Chloe ever been pregnant, or were women everywhere receiving pregnancy scares? That answer was revealed in the form of the half eaten corpse of a baby birthed alongside the spider creature. At least Chloe was pregnant. But what of the other women? What happened to them? Was it just sexually active women or women with partners? Why was the temperature increasing so drastically? Why did the men keep getting headaches when the spiders were growing, yet they disappeared when the widows were birthed? What did the webs inside their victims, such as when someone was bit, mean? Why are they averse and vulnerable to a deaf person's blood?

We know from the prologue that Matt escapes, since he's writing 15 months in the "future" and recounting the events from when everything began. Thus, I felt confident that we would receive a lot more answers as the narrative continued. Where did these widows come from? What exactly were these widows? Why, when we're introduced to Katie, was she not affected? Why was her younger sister Jane not affected? Was it age restrictive?

Likewise, I ran into a problem, conceptually, with the base idea that this only affected women. As a result, most of the book was dominated by male characters- and when there were women, they were 1. a child or 2. sexual interests. 

When we did come across "answers" they were vague, and undescriptive. "Genetically modified foods" is the explanation we're given. For everything. I understand a part of horror relies on the unknown, but I wanted more answers than that- a lot more. In addition, the ending we're given is open, vague, and only represents even more of a threat, with the black widows now coming out of men- also with no explanation. 

The book was enjoyable for it's creep factor, moreso than the other books we've read so far in terms of "scary" but overall I think there were far too many unanswered questions for me to really appreciate it.

Following my discussion of Neville in I Am Legend I've also elected to start a tally of "Would I feel safe near this main character?" and the answer for this book is -8/10 for how many times Matt described a woman as "slim."