Brood X

Synopsis: Seth is laid off from work. His wife Lara just found out they are expecting a baby this summer. Seth plans on documenting the entire pregnancy with his brand new digital camcorder.

During an evening home watching television, the news reports that a swarm of cicada (Brood Ten) are expected to overwhelm the entire Northeast.

Brood Ten is vicious and ready to invade.

During a sweltering summer night, Brood Ten emerges and wreaks havoc with the electric grid, phone and cell service, wi-fi, food and water supply. Civilization as they know it is gone.

Seth and Lara are thrown back to the stone age in their own home with trillions of cicada trying to deposit their eggs and breed.

Fast paced and filled with tension, Brood Ten is the perfect summer read when you’re sitting outside listening to the cicadas sing.

Review: The author sent this book along with Stillwell and I decided to read it as well. In terms of the two books by Cash, this was the better of the two. Normally, I would stay away from books about bugs of any kind, but again, I found myself intrigued by the premise of an infestation of this proportion. It was Biblical in nature and really made my skin crawl to say the least.

The main issue I had with the book was with infestation; I found myself wondering how believable some of the situations were. Could the sheer volume of the bugs cause a house to collapse? Would they really attack anything that was moving, regardless of how many of the bugs there were? Many others came to mind, but I will not post them here to keep from giving away too much of the plot. Another issue that I had was with the main character Seth and how he brought sex up into almost any conversation for the first third of the book. I also found some of his unwillingness to prepare for the infestation a little unbelievable, especially since his wife was pregnant with their first child.

However, aside from all of that, this book was quite a wild ride about halfway through to the end. It made my skin crawl with respect to the bugs and actually made me a little paranoid that I would wake up with one of these big insects sitting on my chest with its stinger about to inject eggs into my body. That part of the story was excellent and is what really made me enjoy the book.

If you like a good bug story that keeps your adrenaline pumping a little all the while you are talking to yourself hoping that the main characters make it out alive somehow, then this book is for you. If you hate bugs then this book is not for. This book was a little slow in the beginning, but well worth getting to the end.

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

I was given a copy of the book by the author via Bostick Communications; I was not paid to give this review.