My first, and only complaint, with this book is that the book synopsis is entirely misleading. If you are prepared to read about survivors trapped in an underground station fighting for survival against the spiders that have nested there.....that doesn't happen. The underground station doesn't even come into play until the last chapters of the book and only briefly.

That said, this was an exciting and enjoyable read. Even with the, somewhat inane, crack addicted spiders...yep, crack addicted....its still good. Pinborough makes it work.

The characters are rich, well developed and believable. The characters were an issue I had with the the last book, "Breeding ground". I even prefer the drug lord and gangsters in this book, over Matt in the last book, which speaks volumes about Pinboroughs amazing character creation here. I had an interest in the outcome of ALL of the characters, " bad guys " included.

Well done Pinborough! ( )

"The spider creatures from Breeding Ground have begun to take over London. A small group of survivors decide to barricade themselves in an unused Underground Station, only to realize-too late-that it's right next to a storehouse for the spiders' food."

That paragraph above is supposedly the synopsis. Anyone who has ever read any of my reviews will know that I never write plot summaries, but this time I have to because that isn't what happens in the story at all.

Feeding Ground is sort of a second part to the story started in Breeding Ground but doesn't advance what happened in the first story at all. As we find out in the first installment almost all women on the planet have become hosts for creatures that turn into huge white spiders that kill and eat everything that they encounter. Those they don't kill they wrap up and store in gossamer webs for later snacking.

While Breeding Ground follows a group of intrepid folks running away from a small town and into a government facility, Feeding Grounds takes place in the projects (or at least what we in the states call the projects or "the hood") of London.

First spoiler
In Breeding Ground we heard about soldiers and several other folks holed up in London. They were communicating with the escapees hiding in the military installation. I expected that this story would tell us the story of those folks---some of whom were scientists working on a solution to the problem and maybe could shed some light on the source of the spiders. I was disappointed that this novel didn't involve them at all. In fact, Feeding Ground didn't give us any more knowledge of the source of this spider invasion. It just happened and the people reacted.

The people in the hood have quite a few more survival skills, not to mention firearms, than the townspeople of Breeding Ground and seem to hold the spiders at bay quite well, at least at first. They are joined by a group of prep school students who are just trying to survive. Feeding Ground brings these people together and I think the interpersonal relationships and conflicts took center stage away from the spiders.

No one "decides to barricade themselves in an unused Underground Station." Most of the action takes place in the high rise apartments in the projects, in a wealthy apartment building, and on the streets of London. They do go into a tube station but that is merely to pass from one place to another in an attempt to escape. Did the person who wrote the blurb actually read the novel? They did find some bad things in the tube tunnels and I will just leave it at that.....

Feeding Grounds was written later and it is a much better written book. The characters were very well drawn, not a stereotype in the bunch and I found myself flying through the pages even though the spider action was rather sparse. Pinborough is a very good writer, not question about it.

What I didn't like was that this second novel (with no third on the horizon?) not only didn't advance the overall story it didn't even get up to the time frame of the first one so it never addresses (but it does hint at) the secondary invasion that occurs in the Breeding Ground that takes a bad situation to a much worse one. It also introduces giant rats that obviously will be important in a later book. And the weather....what is up with the sudden climate change that is turning London into a jungle and that foul tasting rain that the spiders so love and drink up so ravenously?

We need a third installment to answer all of these quesions! Anyone want to knock on Ms. Pinborough's door and ask politely?

( )

Fans of Pinborough's "Breeding Ground", which preceded this novel by a couple of years, may find themselves wallowing in the same pool of disappointment that I found myself after finishing ""Feeding Ground". Not willing to pick up on the group of survivors left behind in the first novel, Pinborough instead introduces the reader to an entirely new group of characters in this book. These characters, though faced with the same issue of trying to survive a London filled with super-sized spiders, just don't display the same panache' as those in the first novel. As a matter of opinion, this reviewer found very little to like or appreciate regarding the new characters. I found myself not caring if they survived the spider attacks or not. I hate when I have to read a book with that mindset.

There's no doubt that Pinborough's established herself as a fine writer as evidenced by the cluster of solid reviews on earlier books like, "The Reckoning", "The Taken", and "Tower Hill". In this case, however, I think she dropped the ball by not rekindling the relationship that readers built with the characters she developed in "Breeding Ground". Even the spiders take a lesser role in this novel.

The die is cast for a third novel in the series, let's just hope Pinborough finds the magic again that she displayed in "Breeding Ground". For this reviewer, it will take some convincing to get me to dig into that third book, if it does indeed materialize. ( )

The book jacket says, "London streets that were once filled with pedestrians, tourists, and shoppers are now clogged with thick webs and dead bodies. Spidery creatures straight out of a nightmare have infested the city, skittering after their human prey, spinning sticky traps to catch their food...

A few desperate survivors have banded together, realizing their only hope for survival is to flee the dying city. Their route will take them through wrecked streets, into an underground train station. Only too late will they discover their deadly mistake: their chosen tunnel is home to the hungry creatures' food cache, filled with cocooned but still living victims. Instead of escape, the group has run straight into the heart of a ... FEEDING GROUND."

My biggest problem with Sarah Pinborough's "Feeding Ground" is from this blurb on the cover. I realize that it was most likely written by someone on the editorial staff, but I found- after reading 310 pages- that it was inaccurate. To be honest, I was quite intrigued to be taken through those devastated London streets filled with wrecked cars, bloody remnants of battle, and larger-than-life spider webs. Unfortunately, this scenario took up only about ten pages of the book. But I was still drawn in by the idea of London survivors groping around in the dark, with stealthy spider-like creatures lowering down on them from above. Yet this segment was even less than ten pages. What the cover blurb should have said is: "A large cast of morally reprehensible characters think about their hierarchy of crime and drug use, while their supporting characters seem even less meritorious than they, leaving- by perspective- the protagonists more relatable."

I was expecting a good amount of action and I instead got a good amount of backstory and internal monologue about building a slumdog crack empire in a shitty London neighborhood. I won't take away from Pinborough's ability to write- she was evocative, original, and quite talented. But I suppose I was fooled by the description of the novel. Another gripe with the cover blurb is that it claims a "few desperate survivors have banded together," when, in fact, this was minimal. There were two main groups of characters: The bad guys, a small contingent at the head of the Crookston crime syndicate, and the good guys, the trio of teenagers who were hiding from the bad guys so they weren't executed for nearly testifying against them. The only "banding together" occurred in the beginning, when an autistic boy joins the teenagers simply because they knew each other from school and when three other characters- introduced more than halfway through the book- were thrust into the acquaintance of the teens and the autistic boy. The group consisting of the bad guys never seemed to band together at all, instead tending to implode within themselves, as I suppose criminal organizations are prone to do in times of anarchy.

The real travesty in this novel is that the main antagonist- the race of spidery creatures which had jumped to the top of the food chain- were so little encountered. They were incredibly unique creatures that I thought would create some unique action segments. They were, of course, very spiderlike, all of the obvious characteristics present. But aside from being giant spiders, they had suckers along their belly which was only minimally mentioned and could have been more properly utilized. Also, they had a communal memory and consciousness, communicating with each other by telepathy and true empathy. This could have spawned some amazing attack scenarios, but unfortunately it was one more missed trait. Aside from the brunt of this race, the Whites, there was a number of outcasts, the Squealers, who were slightly smaller, colored differently, and weaker in the telepathic sense. This was because they had been born to crack-addicted hosts, rather than normal ones. The Whites and the Squealers seemed to be natural enemies, though nothing came of this until the anticlimactic 1/2 page "last stand."

Also, another race of monsters was introduced at about the 3/4 mark... a swarm of huge rats- about the size of cats- that I thought would be a sort of Chekov's Gun. A cavalry of super rats attacking the Whites and the Squealers to give the protagonists just enough time to escape in the climax. Unfortunately, these rats were briefly shown to us twice, then left without conclusion or explanation. Their existence in the novel could have been omitted entirely without altering a single plot point.

All in all, I rate Sarah Pinborough's "Feeding Ground" a 3 out of 5. Although it moved slowly, I loved the race of spiders and only wish I had been shown more of them. If there had been less moments of speculation and more of what the cover blurb described, this book would have been a 5 for sure. I look forward to reading another of Pinborough's novels, but I think this time I will skip reading the description on the back to keep my expectations low.

Best Characteristic: Pinborough's dialog was incredible. When reading the characters' dialogs, I never felt I was reading at all. They spoke realistically to themselves, without hokey phrases or suspect wording. However, if you aren't up to date on your UK slang, you might want to brush up. Local color was a large part of the vocal realism. ( )

In a follow-up to her Breeding Ground (which I haven't read, and I don't think you need to have; it seems to be more a companion than a sequel based on the summary of Breeding Ground), Pinborough takes us into a London overrun by giant spiders.

The plot follows three groups: Blane Gentle-King and his gang, who have inadvertently created a crack-addicted strain of the arachnids; a group of friends hiding out in the tenements, playing cat & mouse with Blane's men, after one of them informed on Blane; and a group of prep school students stranded in the city when the spiders were born from (almost) all of the world's women.

Pinsborough sets the stage well and keeps the action moving. Her location descriptions are precise, and she aptly transitions the tone of the narrative through various characters, including all of the leads, several members of Blane's gang, and even the spiders.

There are a few loose threads hanging from the novel: London is shockingly empty even before the outbreak begins, and the explanation that everyone has bunkered down seems a bit hollow. A lone woman appears in the novel: I think it's to provide hope that the human race can survive the apocalypse, but it's never explained how, why, or how many women are still around. My interpretation was that she was barren and unable to birth the spiders, but that would negate any hope of humanity's continued existence.

All in all, a very good apocalypse novel. Like most of the sub-genre, Pinborough has constant action going on, plenty of chattel, and a broad cast to work with. And giant spiders. Recommended.

P.S. The jacket blurb is spoilerific. Don't read it. ( )