It seems the start of a glorious summer as Alan Alton and his family settle into their new home in the Shropshire hills. Then the insects starts to appear. First there’s one… then hundreds…. thousands…. millions. A smothering tide of destruction covers the land.
As the heat-wave continues week after week, the horde of invaders grows- a hideous, red eyed devastation spreading across town and country. Biting, stripping, devouring everything – and everyone – in their path! Britain is being eaten alive…
Locusts by Guy N. Smith. Published in the UK by The Sheridan Book Company in 1993. Originally published in Great Britain by Hamlyn Paperbacks 1979. 230 pages long.
I love me some creature feature horror. And it’s pretty hard to wander through the wilderness of creature horror books without hearing the name Guy N. Smith. The man is a legend of horror in general, and very influential in the creature category. If you want wildlife nature gone rouge, he is your man. Bats, snakes, gators and of course, the killer crabs. In his horror foray, Smith covers much of the animal kingdom. I have been dying to read all of his horror for some time now and I’ve been slowly getting my hands on them.
The Locusts starts off not exactly great. We are introduced to the two main characters, Alan, and his wife Sheila. I say the book starts off not so great because these two characters are hugely unlikable! Alan is pushy, has to have his way, and is a real jerk. Sheila is kind of bitchy and screechy. Both of them don’t seem to really like each other and are ready to kill each other. It doesn’t take long for both of them to start thinking of leaving the other. Alan goes so far as to fantasize about the hot neighbor and eventually sleep with the woman. Sheila just becomes bitchier and bitchier, snapping at everyone while threatening to leave Alan, but never pulling the trigger. Their relationship is uncomfortable and not very fun to read for 90% of the book. They argue often and make tons of passive aggressive snipes at each other. Pretty much the whole time I’m just hoping they both will be killed and eaten by the locusts.
Once you get past the two unlikable main characters and their crappy behaviors, the book is highly entertaining! You have a huge swarm of killer bugs devouring England. So many locusts that it is literary suffocating to be caught outside among them. They crawl in your nose, down your throat, up your…. uh, yeah, THERE. There are many glorious deaths and massive carnage caused by the little buggers. Soooo many people die in pretty spectacular ways. There was no shortage of blood, guts, and gore.
Locusts does not make you wait a long time for things to go sideways. It gets pretty straight to the point fairly quick. The bugs show up. The bugs eat things. The bugs kill people. There is a very quick set up and BOOM. The locusts are on the scene causing death and destruction. I love it when a book gets right to the point like that.
There is a little bit of animal death in the book, which is something I always frown at and like to warn others about. It wasn’t a lot, and it mostly happened off page, which is much more tolerable. Whenever ferrets, rabbits or greyhounds show up in a book, I am always super happy. I love when animals I’ve had as pets show up in the books I read! This book had a pet rabbit that belonged to the main family. As soon as the rabbit first appeared at the beginning of the book, I was just like UH OH. D: Please don’t eat the rabbit, please don’t eat the rabbit, please don’t eat the rabbit…. Guy gets a big thumbs up from me for having the family saving the rabbit from Locusts at the end. ❤ YAY!
This book was very entertaining and filled with crazy. It jumped straight into the action and did not stop until the very last page. There was a lot of death and destruction all over England. There was some animal deaths but it was a little bit easier to read because it mostly all happens off page. My only real complaint about the book is that the two main characters were just not very likeable pretty much the whole time. Even with irksome main characters, this book about killer bugs was a lot of fun to read.
Creature From The Book Lagoon 