Marino’s (
The Seven Visitations of Sydney Burgess) latest imagines a skin-crawling, bug-centric apocalypse. Scientists have noticed that cicadas are behaving unusually, appearing in swarms and emerging well ahead of schedule. Soon, police detective Vicky Paterson and private investigators Nick and Alicia are horrified to discover how the cicadas’ massing numbers and startling evolution might consume the world. As he did in
It Rides a Pale Horse, Marino creates compassionate portraits of characters who could be eradicated at any moment. His descriptions of body horror viscerally show the insects’ terrible power to break down people and destroy their humanity. Like many good apocalypse tales, it’s the human element that delivers the horror, and narrator Candace Fitzgerald bestows the divergent characters with pathos that clearly communicates their sorrow, fear, and courage. Her nuanced yet emotional performance keeps these characters sympathetic, drawing listeners in even as the story bounces among its multiple narratives that finally converge at the book’s climax.
VERDICT Marino’s unsettling tale should attract fans of Ezekiel Boone’s “Hatching” series and other stories where horror arrives on millions of legs.
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