Breeding Ground

by Sarah Pinborough

Life was good for Matt and Chloe. They were in love and looking forward to their new baby. But what Chloe gave birth to isn't a baby. It isn't even human. It's an entirely new species that uses humans only for food and as hosts for their young.

As Matt soon learns, though, he is not alone in his terror. Women all over town have begun to give birth to these hideous creatures, spidery nightmares that live to kill and feed. As the infestation spreads and the countryside is reduced to a series of web-shrouded ghost towns, will the survivors find a way to fight back? Or is it only a matter of time before all of mankind is reduced to a Breeding Ground

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Apocalyptic, Science Fiction, Monsters, Thriller, Adventure

339 pages, Paperback

First published August 29, 2006

About the author

Sarah Pinborough is a New York Times bestselling and Sunday Times Number one and Internationally bestselling author who is published in over 30 territories worldwide. Having published more than 25 novels across various genres, her recent books include Behind Her Eyes, now a smash hit Netflix limited series, Dead To Her, now in development with Amazon Studios, and 13 Minutes and The Death House in development with Compelling Pictures. Sarah lives in the historic town of Stony Stratford, the home of the Cock and Bull story, with her dog Ted. Her next novel, Insomnia, is out in 2022. You can follow Sarah on Twitter at @sarahpinborough.

Reviews

[Bandit · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was actually quite excellent. Very creepy post-apocalyptic tale with nicely fleshed out characters and eerie atmosphere.The only thing that bothered me and I wanted to mention this to maybe get some opinions from those who've read this book so in the end Rebecca is genuinely happy she gets pregnant?and so is the guy? SERIOUSLY? the world has gone to shit, the odds of survival are microscopic and she's glad to be bringing a baby into this world? that just strikes me as idiotic, even is I can justify the hero's bed hopping from Katie to Rebecca as a post-apocalyptic coping mechanism. but a BABY? seriously? That's probably the reason it wasn't a five star read for me, but it was a solid 4.5, GR just doesn't allow halves. Anyway, aside from that, very good book and I highly recommend it. Can't wait to read the sequel.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Apocalyptic creature feature involving very nasty spiders taking over the planet. This book is quite a bit of fun--I started it one evening and stayed up the next evening to finish it which means I read it just a little over 24 hours. I have already purchased the sequel and plan on reading that one too.

However, it does struggle under the common weaknesses of stories of this type (creature features specifically).

First, the good. Well written. Plot just hums along with no lags in pace. Ms. Pinborough knows how to build the suspense and let the story develop. Dialog is well done and this book is just well written all around. I am interested in reading more of her work.

The not so good. Maybe I have seen/read too many of these things, but this one has several of the common weaknesses:

(1) The WHAT and WHY: there is no real attempt to explain the origin of these awful creatures---what they are or why they exist. This is a sci-fi sort of monster tale so we need explanations, not just some sort of "well we must have done too much genetic engineering on plants and animals that we set off some chain of events that resulted in these spiders overtaking the entire world overnight." Seriously?

(2) There were several stereotypical characters that were so much so that I could anticipate plot developments. Remember the egocentric lawyer in Jurassic Park that is only out for his own survival? Well he is here and acts just like he did in that movie. We also have the brilliant but clueless scientist who was part of what caused it all.

(3) The spiders' weakness/vulnerability is odd in the extreme and with no explanation nor do I think there could be. I will just leave it at that.

There was also too much emphasis, in my view, on gender roles. The main character (Matt) is male and the story is told from his first person point of view, using the cliche form of a diary supposedly written to whatever survivor comes upon this writing and reads it. Matt is constantly defensive about his actions and even his thoughts and is forever apologizing, claiming that we need to understand that he is male so that is why he thinks/acts that way. I can't imagine a guy doing that. All it did for me was to constantly remind me that the author was female and was having a bit of trouble with a male voice.

I am a fan of creature features and I enjoyed this book and plan on reading the sequel. I am also interested in reading her other books because I feel that she is a talented writer and writes a compelling story.

[Kirsten · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sarah Pinborough writes books that really stick with you. Even now, over 2 years later, I still find myself thinking about Behind Her Eyes. And this book is the same. While Behind Her Eyes, was horror disguised as a psychological thriller, this one is straight horror - and good horror at that. Good British horror with a post-apocalyptic dash thrown in.

The author obviously has a great admiration for John Wyndham. At one point, a character is even reading The Kraken Wakes. The book starts mildly enough, but it only takes 2 chapters before the world is completely turned over.

It is creepy, terrifying, and foreboding and I loved it!!

[Robert Beveridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sarah Pinborough, Breeding Ground (Leisure, 2006)

I can be stubborn at times. My local library has a selection of Sarah Pinborough's more recent novels, but since Breeding Ground was the first one I heard about, I wanted to start there. So I've held off on reading Pinborough until I could get my hands on a copy of this one, which has been out of print since about five past forever (despite a sequel having been released last year). That finally happened, and as with most genre horror, once I sat down with it, I ended up tearing through it in about a day. I liked it well enough, but I ended up wondering if I shouldn't have started with The Reckoning. There was a blurb for it in the back of this one, and it intrigued me. While well-written enough, Breeding Ground was a bit derivative for me, and a bit on the too-clever-by-half side at times (having your characters read John Wyndham books when your own book directly descends from John Wyndham seems a touch, well, twee).

Matt and his girlfriend Chloe have what may be the best relationship ever. (If you've ever read Melville's Pierre, I couldn't resist drawing a parallel between the opening chapters describing Pierre's relationship with his mother.) Well, except that Matt's a bit of a doormat. You can easily imagine him in the pub on open mic night strumming Sufjan Stevens tunes. That aside, however, things turn kind of nasty when Chloe suddenly starts gaining weight, and we find out how horribly shallow Matt really is. Which is its own kind of horror novel in itself, though it's not the kind we have here. A trip to the doctor proves entirely unfruitful until Matt runs into the guy at a local pub, and is brought back to reality: it's not just happening to Chloe. It's happening to every woman in the town... and, says the doctor, the world. They're all pregnant. And what they're carrying inside them is not human...

From there, it becomes pretty standard last-band-of-humans-vs.-the-monsters fare with a genderific twist that allows testosterone to run free. The John Wyndham implications are obvious, of course, but Pinborough is following a grand old tradition in British horror fiction. (Stirling Silliphant and Wolf Rilla obviously had a hand in birthing this baby as well.) Given that, you have to turn to whether the book delivers as promised, and I think this one does; despite Matt's reactions being just unbearably boorish every once in a while, he's a well-rounded character who makes sense, even if it's not the kind of sense I'd like, and a number of the other characters are fleshed out well, if not as well as Matt is. The ending is a touch unsatisfying, but that, again, is in the grand British horror tradition, as well as setting the book up for a sequel (though not the one we currently have, which I am told is contemporaneous to this book). If you're a fan of icky monsters, you should like this one. ***

[Dylan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book! The best horror novel about the apocalypse ever. It's a little adult, but still very good. It's kinda like the Alien movies only the aliens are spiders. Don't let that put you off though the author writes it very well. Look this up online for a complete summery. I highly recomend this book! :D

[Justin Holley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, yeah, this is the good stuff! This is horror fiction at its finest, in my opinion. Sarah writes with a fierce, yet tight, prose that are both riveting and terrifying. Like holding onto an electric fence and not wanting to let go. I will definitely be ordering more of her work.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

During the past several years, apocalyptic horror novels have been filled with zombies, zombies, and more zombies. There have, however, been some exceptions -- Brian Keene's The Conqueror Worms is one, and this book, Breeding Ground, is another.

It's the end of the world, and the planet is teeming with...well...take a look at the cover, and you'll figure it out pretty quickly. While the leading theory as to how this particularly nasty infestation came about is a bit far-fetched, Pinborough's entertaining writing style and interesting characters allow the reader to stay engrossed in the story without too much of a distraction.

It's no profound piece of literature, but Breeding Ground is a fast-paced, high-action, entertaining read. I'm definitely looking forward to reading Feeding Ground , Pinborough's sequel to this book.

[Kimberly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great descriptive moments! I'm looking forward to following up with the sequel.

[Karl]

This is copy 30 of 75 signed numbered copies.

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

An early book by Pinborough, but still a fun read. This really reminded me of a zombie novel, but instead of zombies, we have giant spider-like monsters! Set in a small village in England (Pinborough's home town she tells us in the intro), the story centers on our main protagonist Matt, a mild mannered real estate broker. Matt and his wife Chloe are ecstatic that she is pregnant (she is a lawyer) and have big plans for the future, but something strange is going on, and the future may not be all that pleasant!

Chloe starts to gain weight (she is pregnant after all), but the weight is all over her body, and further, she is not even eating! After a visit to the doctor who proclaims her just fine (but who also enigmatically whispers 'it is happening everywhere'), things go from bad to worse. Matt comes home from work one day and Chloe has filled the fridge with various types of offal, which she is chowing down raw. Further, she throws Matt into a wall and freezes him there via some new, strange mental power. After a horrible night, Chloe, perhaps with her remaining vestiges of humanity, tells him to leave ASAP, and then proceeds to explode like something from Alien, releasing a giant, spider-like monster. Matt splits, and eventually finds some other people, who all have their experiences with the spider things, which they deem 'widows'.

The rag-tag group tries to make plans, for it seems that civilization is just about over, except for a few other isolated groups of humanity; they eventually make it to a government communication/research facility and hole up...

Breeding Ground was a fun, light, end of the world story, albeit one with some glaring internal contradictions. What caused the change in Chloe (and most other females) was never explained, but some cite GMOs and hybrids, etc. This did have some tense moments and would probably make a good B-movie. 3 stars.

[Kat · Rating 2 out of 5]

Breeding Ground has been on my TBR since October 2011 and was on my wishlist for several months before that. And yes, this is a horror book about spiders - arachnophobes beware.

The story begins with a young couple, Matt and Chloe who discover that, although unplanned, Chloe is expecting their first child. Their lives are typical of a couple in their early thirties, and although unexpected, both are excited about the prospect of their new arrival. It's only as Chloe's pregnancy progresses that things start to take a turn for the unusual, as she puts on weight rapidly and becomes moody and unpredictable.

The realisation that things are not normal comes slowly to Matt, and that's the first part of the plot I had an issue with. I get that he was caught up in his job and Chloe's difficulties, but he doesn't notice that something unusual is happening in his town and indeed around the country until the shit hits the fan late one night and it seemed unrealistic that he hadn't seen anything unusual on the news or even within his town.

In some parts of the story I liked Matt, at others I would have greatly enjoyed slapping him - he moves from woman to woman without much show of emotion (OK, he's a man but do we really need to be so stereotypical?) and he isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer - he misses vital clues when another woman falls pregnant that are exactly the same as Chloe experienced only a short time before.

There's a cast of other survivors, some interesting, some completely annoying and a whole bunch that kind of melt together into one person rather than having individual personalities and I kept getting confused as to who exactly each of these characters were and I couldn't tell you their back stories by the time I reached the end of the book. It's fine to have unlikable characters, and it's even something I enjoy, but none of them were particularly memorable.

When it comes to the horror level, this is gory and scary - what the spiders do to the humans they capture is truly gruesome and nothing is held back in the descriptions. Killer spiders were never going to be anything else, and these spiders are particularly horrendous.

There isn't a full explanation of how the spiders came to mutate and invade, and exactly what their intention is other than nom-nom humans, but there is another book so I assume at least some of those questions are answered. The premise of Breeding Ground is chilling, but the execution lacks characterisation and enough background for me to have really enjoyed it.

Read more of my reviews at The Aussie Zombie

[Jay Massiet · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book that I found interesting at times but largely unbelievable. It’s a work about giant spiders destroying mankind, which was the interesting part. I had a very difficult time immersing myself and getting involved in the story, however. Whenever I teetered on the edge of forgetting the world around me, something on the page would yank me back to Earth. Sometimes it was a situation that didn’t seem plausible, or an explanation that seemed awkward and forced. An example of this would be that Matt, the lead of the book, says he is writing the story, that it “may be the last thing” (225) he leaves to the world, yet the very next page divulges in the sex he had with Rebecca for three pages. I couldn’t find it realistic that a person would write something intending for it to be read and then write every detail of the sex he had with his lover. There may be some people who would, but in a world utterly destroyed I don’t think documenting every stroke of the hand during sex would be high on the author’s list. I won’t say that Breeding Ground was horrible, it’s a book that I didn’t mind reading, but its not one that I will read again any time soon.

Breeding Ground begins with a happy couple and this could only mean something bad would be occurring shortly. Chloe tells her boyfriend, Matt, she’s pregnant and it is here the story becomes interesting; Chloe’s pregnancy begins to have problems. She is gaining weight (stones as the British Pinborough puts it), but the weight is not where it should be and how it should look; instead, her flesh is lumpy and leaning towards grotesque. The images Pinborough painted here were solid and easily imagined. Shortly after this scene, Matt finds out another person he knows has a wife with the same “fat” problem. Chloe and Matt go to the hospital after this and it is at this point where the facts of the story begin to make little sense.

The Doctor knows something is wrong and has seen it with many of the women in the town. The doctor doesn’t want to say anything about it, but this seemed strange. The doctor tells Matt “no one in the whole world” (25) knows what is happening to the women. This brought up the first issue I had with Breeding Ground: if the whole world’s doctors can’t figure out what’s going on, then this means there are, at least, thousands of people trying to study the issue, yet no one knows that a problem exists until the spiders begin erupting from the women. It seems highly unlikely that so many people could know of the problem but the media or other sources of news never hear of the story to report it. I had trouble digesting the fact that no one knew what was going on until late in the book and that was only one man. From here on out I kept running into roadblocks that derailed my mind from fully enjoying this book.

There is a scene contained in the pages that as an avid horror reader I found both horrific and disturbing. It happens when the thing growing inside of Chloe alongside of her baby decides that the fetus is food. Chloe miscarries and the fetus is seen by Matt on the kitchen floor half-formed, but even more disgusting, half-eaten. Pinborough didn’t leave anything to the imagination. Matt sounds genuinely horrified. Even if this scene was included for its shock value, I liked the uncomfortable feeling the scene gave because most horror works are unable to produce that feeling within me.

Farther into the book, the spiders are finally “birthed” and begin to decimate the area Matt occupies. They are eating people and have covered large portions of areas in webs. Matt begins to gather a group together with various people he runs into. One of these persons is Katie; Katie manages to “control” one of the giant spiders. Matt doesn’t know how, exclaiming, “something was stopping it, and that something was Katie” (104). This seemed like Pinborough was attempting at making the reader question what was going to happen, making the reader keep reading. Instead, it was easily seen that she would be pregnant with a creature because of the earlier mention of telepathy by Chloe. Knowing so far in advance of a characters outcome makes that character boring. Knowing too much information makes the story boring. There needs to be a balance and I don’t feel the balance was struck here. The mention of telepathy was only hinted at earlier in the book, but to the reader it should be easy to pick up. It’s much later that Matt realizes the link and so much later that it can be off-putting. It’s these kinds of details that made this work difficult to get lost in.

Breeding Ground ends with new spiders and people who have genetically caused deafness have blood that is acidic when sprayed on or eaten by the “widows.” This was unique. I don’t think I have read a book where a genetic defect caused the blood of a person to be weaponized. As for the new spiders, all the previous spiders were born of women and now a new breed can be born of men. Although the spiders were only able to be incubated in a woman (because of “hormones” and such, as the book says), I had the mindset that the spiders would always be born this way because of the way they entered the world: genetic manipulation by scientists who shouldn’t have been messing with certain things. I liked my idea and then it changed in the end. The spiders seem to be perfect monsters and then they are made less scary now that they will have nests and mates. In the future, the spiders will be able to be seen coming instead of also being an invisible horror that can attack anyone at any time. I would have like to have seen it end with males becoming infected because of whatever was infecting women have adapted to the male body. Reading is subjective, however, and what I would have preferred to see in the end may not be the same for everyone.

As for the protagonist, Matt: it is hard to connect to him. He recently lost the love of his life and their unborn child, but immediately ogles other women. When Katie and her sister make their first appearance in the novel, Matt immediately thinks how “pretty” Katie is (86). In a world where every woman is capable of bringing forth creatures that want to eat people, his first thought should have been if she’s a carrier. If it had been a year, or even just months, since he had last seen a woman it could have been more understandable; he did this, however, shortly after the world went down the toilet and, what should have made him think even more about the spiders, watched his girlfriend birth one. Matt supposedly loved Chloe but moved on to other women rather quickly making him, I think, extremely flat and disconnected.

I think Pinborough’s Breeding Ground was interesting at times, but there were more issues with plot and character than the typical reader may be willing to hurdle. This work was not too horrible and worth the read to escape time but not something I will be picking back up.

[Melissa Helwig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Matt and Chloe are expecting a baby, but instead Chloe gives birth to a creature which looks like a giant spider. The spiders (later named "Widows") use women as hosts, killing all females in England. After the death of his beloved Chloe, Matt goes in search of other survivors. He finds a few men and, surprisingly, a few women. Together they seek a safe haven, away from the Widows.

The story moves along quickly, gripping you from page one (as I've already mentioned) and keeps you wanting to read on to see if Matt will discover more survivors and if they will live through encounters with the Widows.

The apocalyptic plot isn't anything new, neither is having aliens use humans as hosts, but having the alien-type-thing be a big spider is unique. And the explanation for how the Widows came into being is interesting and all too realistic. But killing off almost the entire female population in Britain is pretty anti-feminist. I understand that it had to be women, because men can't give birth, but maybe Pinborough could have developed an idea which didn't involve all the women dying. There are a few women survivors, but there is no explanation why they survived while every other woman died. Also, there is no talk in the book about whether the Widows are terrorizing the whole world, or just England. You would think that's the first thing the characters would want to find out, so they can escape the Widows (like in 28 Days Later), but I guess they never thought of that.

The worst part of the novel is unfortunately the most important part: the characters. Breeding Ground is told from the perspective of Matt, who is kind of a douche. Immediately after the love of his life dies, Matt starts sleeping with one of the only female survivors. No one else trusts her because, well she's a woman and they just assume she will become pregnant with a Widow. But of course Matt trusts her, endangering all the other mens' lives, just because he hopes to bang her. And she's only 21! He even keeps mentioning how young she is compared to him. I never warmed to any of the characters, but Matt was the only one I really hated.

I haven't read the sequel, Feeding Ground, yet but I heard it doesn't have any of the characters from this novel, so maybe it will be slightly better. Breeding Ground isn't a bad novel, I love apocalyptic stories and this one is interesting and well-written, but all the women dying, the characters not trying to find out what's going on in the rest of the world and jerky Matt bothered me.

Read more of my reviews at http://littlemisszombie.blogspot.com

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

You don’t find a lot of books about giant killer spiders. Anyway, obviously, you have to suspend your disbelief pretty seriously to enjoy this book. It’s a leisure harbor, which means you can expect lots of blood and gore and also a lot of fast-paced excitement. Overall, I really enjoyed this – it’s hardly Shakespeare, but it’s a fast-paced story and it’s easy to put yourself in the lead character’s position as he tries to survive themonsters as well as the other humans that survived the initial attack. The spiders start growing in the bodies of women, who begin to act moody and strange and put on a great deal of weight. It happens all over the world. Then, in one horrible night, the alien creatures burst out of their hosts, killing them, and begin to devour everyone in sight. Only a small number of people survive. As Matt, the main character, find a safe place to hide out from the spiders along with a small group of fellow survivors, it is only a matter of time before the creatures figure out how to get to them, and so the people begin to turn on one another, until resources run out, and more people begin to change as the spiders begin growing inside them. The only thing I didn’t like about this book was its open-ended ending, though it left quite a bit of room for a sequel and I believe there actually is a sequel out there which I will have to look up. This was a fun and fast-paced novel that was very gory and dark but which definitely held my interest through the end. It was definitely a far-fetched novel – a true dark fantasy with little relation to reality, but it was still an enjoyable read.

[Warren Chan · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a quotation on the cover of this paperback that reads, "Fans of Bentley Little, Richard Laymon, and Dean Koontz will be pleased." I didn't think much of that when I bought this book. Honestly, I cannot recall what steered me toward it. I think maybe I wanted to read another of her books that was woefully out of print. But I wanted to experience her writing to see if it was worth trying to track down a rare book, and I must say that I'm surprised how similar this felt to a Richard Laymon book, but with fewer references to "rumps" and nipples. Makes sense, then, that this was a Leisure Fiction release.

The concept of Breeding Ground is very disturbing, and has some shared genes with a story I was working on for years and years but abandoned some time ago. Maybe that was how I came to the book. Anyway, seeing how the concept played out from another person's mind was fun for me. I kept finding myself wishing the protagonist was a woman, and wondering if it would have been harder for her to get this book published if it hadn't been a male protagonist. Or was that just the way the story formed in her mind? I'd like to ask her.

One thing that bothered me about this book is that the conclusion felt too... inconclusive. It felt like it was building toward something that it didn't deliver. I was left with questions which felt less philosophically thought-provoking, and more "what is the point of leaving the story this way?" But I see that a sequel was published three years later, so I believe I will have to track that down and read it to see if it makes this story feel complete.

[Rich · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this day and age, Zombie madness has swept through horror, and while that may be a good thing, Breeding Ground struck me as a breath of fresh air. Giant spiders have taken over the world, especially in UK, and the survivalists are not the gun-toting types one normally sees in American post-apocalyptic fiction.

[Trevor Oakley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has all the feel of a suspenseful zombie novel...without the zombies! This is a gripping work of survival horror fans of apocalyptic literature should thoroughly enjoy.

[Terry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad read. An interesting story, although I had issues with the timeline. Overall, it was ok.

[John Bruni · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a top notch version of what I like to call zombie-ish apocalypses. It's the same zombie survival story as usual, but instead of zombies, it's [blank]. In this case, it's these giant pale spider things with red eyes that gestate in human women until they tear their way out into the world and feed on the men and spin their poisonous webs all over the place. That's pretty damned intense. Here's another interesting thing: this is a world without (more or less) women. That story has been told a bunch of times from the opposite perspective. A world of women with only one (or maybe two) men? That's a young man's fapping fantasy, for sure. But a world of men with only one (or maybe two, three) woman? It's also very interesting that a lot of men don't really notice there is something wrong with the women until it's too late. It's as if men . . . don't pay attention much to women, right? Unless it's during sex, and really, men don't think about the woman even then. This is a very good book. It's a nasty bit of work, and it is relentless, especially with the horrifying revelation in the end. I think the BBC should do a TV show about this. AMC would probably do it, but they'd want to Americanize it. This is a wonderfully British tale of terror. If you haven't read it, do so at your earliest convenience.

[Cassandra Glissadevil · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.1 stars!

“Dark and light. Horror and beauty. Everything is extremes.”
― Sarah Pinborough

Breeding Ground hits the ground running. Something nasty is happening to the women...it's not good. A few reviewers complained about the lack of explanations. I get it. That sort of thing doesn't bother me, as long as the book is scary. Breeding Ground dishes out generous helpings of horror...for the first half of the book. I had high hopes. Slathering translucent fat spider creatures will do that.

But then, something happened to the horror. Half way through the novel, the protagonist finds sanctuary and routine. Internal bickering replaces the alien horror. "I don't like him. He's uptight. She's finicky. He's rude and obnoxious."

Roommate horror bores me. Tribalism bores me. Pinborough intent on setting up a sequel, spent half of Breeding Ground preparing the ground for a sequel- "Feeding Ground".

Breeding Ground is like a relationship that begins with a bang, fizzles out, endures too long, until you end it. "It's not your fault Sarah. You did the best you could."

[Jonathan Echevarria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall this book was a fun read. You can tell that this is one of the earlier works of fiction that the author worked on. Some of the information and descriptions are a bit repetitive. However if you like post apocalyptic novels, this will offer a fun and entertaining time. It sounds like the writer had a lot of fun coming up with new ways to torture our heroes. And there is some imaginative parts of the story that are unique and I have yet to encounter anywhere else. It’s a shame that the publisher screwed over the author, from what I remember she had a difficult time obtaining the rights to her book. That is probably why we haven’t seen many follow-ups to this nightmare world. Hopefully someday she regains the rights to her story and comes back to this landscape with her now experienced writing style.

[Nicholas Kaufmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Sarah Pinborough's magnificent thriller BEHIND HER EYES a few years ago and absolutely loved it, so when I found a copy of BREEDING GROUND, one of her early horror novels for now-defunct mass market publisher Leisure, I snatched it up. BREEDING GROUND is definitely "paperback horror," with all the good and bad that entails, but Pinborough is a talented writer who lifts this novel above others like it with her skillful use of voice and characterization. I don't think it's as good as her later novels -- some of it is clumsy, many of the interpersonal conflicts feel forced -- but you could say that about any writer's early work, and BREEDING GROUND does show a lot of future promise. It may not stay with you or get under your skin like BEHIND HER EYES, but it's an enjoyable monster romp if you're in the mood for one.

[Alison Way · Rating 5 out of 5]

Horrifying. You won't be able to put it down until you've read every last . . . thread of terrifyingly creepy, chilling, revolting nastiness -- and I mean that in a really good way! I picked this up years ago when I was an EiC for Dorchester Media, and I still think how great it is that a mere work freebie turned out to be one of the most chilling horror novels I've ever read. I never have forgotten this one, which is why I recently purchased the sequel on Amazon. Sarah Pinborough is a gifted storyteller with a unique imagination, a willingness to walk into darkness, and a real flair for the truly ghastly details that make scary stories leap off the page and find a parasite's place in your most primal nightmares. By all means let this one trigger your phobias -- just don't say I didn't warn you.

[Morgan Chalfant · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pinborough has a neat concept in this book and the story is compelling. The ending is a bit flat, but I'm given to understand that this is the first book in a series, so it's pretty forgivable. Terrifying in spots. I would have liked to see more from her female characters in the novel, as they were super interesting (SPOILER WARNING. STOP HERE). The whole concept of why they weren't infected initially (a dog and one of the women being deaf) like all the other women was a bit of a stretch. The deaf idea I liked, because it provided another challenge in an already challenging deadly world. Overall, I enjoyed it.

[Hugo · Rating 2 out of 5]

A fast, pacy read of fairly bland, occasionally gorily descriptive prose, and blindly following the Five (Cliched) Stages of the (Post) Apocalypse - Invasion, Survival, Sanctuary, Conflict, Exodus...yawn. Pinborough, sadly, fails to write any more rounded and less sex-obsessed a male protagonist than her male peers, and the 'science' that explains the monsters' origin and weakness is ridiculous.

[Laura · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read the original, War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells. This was a pitiful take off on that work with many similarities to the Walking Dead. Matt screws all the women, knocks up two of them. I was hoping he was going to be the source of the contagion, that would have at least been interesting. Maybe it was his Breeding Ground? Drivel.

[Victor Cypert · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am reflecting on this book some 4 years after having first read it. I recall poorly conceived spider-monsters and a horribly mechanical sex scene between two characters for whom I felt (and still feel) nothing. I also recall deaf people blood. Oh, Lord....

[Querus Abuttu · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Where were all the Arnold Schwarzeneggers...
...when you really needed them?"
~Sarah Pinborough (2011). Breeding Ground

Breeding Ground was a surprising read in many ways. It had an interesting story premise, which reminded me of Matheson's "I am Legend" only crawlier. I enjoyed much of the writing, particularly at the beginning, although I felt some of the novel dragged at bit in the middle. Despite that, Sarah Pinborough has an excellent writing voice and many scenes in the story were superb. For some reason, however, this story took a longer time for me to read than other novels I'd read recently. I can't quite put my finger on why. I didn't have that 'I can't put this book down' sensation that I'd had previously with Richard Matheson's stories, or novels by Clive Barker.

Although Pinborough wrote this story with the kind of monsters I have an affinity for, something in construction of the work and in the prose (in different places) was lacking at times. At the very beginning, I didn't buy off on Matthew Edge's '...I can't tell you how this all happened...' premise, where this horrible 'disease' is suddenly taking over the women of the world. And then to read later that Dr Whitehead, the scientist, says that the disease came about from genetically modified food, was a mental turn off. I think I could have bought it if I'd seen/read some indication of it earlier...but to just have the idea dumped on me in Chapter 16 was a bit much. And it was inconsistent. Matthew Edge acts as if he had no idea what happened in the Prologue, but then we find out it's humans who created the aberration. I wanted to see the genetic experiment somewhere, to feel it happening, to understand and know about it instead of having it placed in my lap midway through the novel.

Genius moments for Pinborough were the initial descriptions of the women gaining weight and the subtle changes going on, coupled with the female transformations. I adored reading about Chloe's physical and mental changes, and the overtly gross verbiage of birthing her baby and eating half of it (Why only half, I wondered), but after that things didn't get interesting for me until the battle with the widows at the boy scout hut. Then the amputation of Dave's arm and their finding safety/shelter at Hanstone Park were excellent. The story concept itself, along with the dialogue, was well done.

Still, there were overly extended/unnecessarily long run-on sentences in this piece that could have been chopped in two to make the story better. It made me think about my own writing and how I need to cut down on lengthy prose. And in some places there were sentences that I couldn't believe an editor let slide. Take this sentence for example:

"Another pang of loneliness and heartache stabbed inside, and I hoped that there would be a time when I felt safe and secure enough to allow some time for all the grief inside to come out and then allow me to keep her close inside."

The word "inside" is used three times in the above sentence, and reading it let me see how mistakes like this can pull a reader out of the story and make it less enjoyable. It was definite food for thought.

At one point Pinborough describes the human rules of their small group trying to survive:

"We were like scavengers now—the morality of taking what wasn’t ours no longer applied."

I thought the above phrase was a great line to describe how their social order, the norm of things, had decayed and was replaced with a different philosophy of existing. She does this one more time toward the end of the book:

"We’d all reached the conclusion that this was what had to be done, and we needed to see it through together. A new order had taken hold and our old laws no longer applied. I think this was the first day that we accepted that."

Overall, I thought the work Pinborough did on this was brilliant. She kept tension throughout the story, and the conflict she wove into it was almost continuous. The worst part for me was (honestly) the ending. Unlike Matheson's "I am Legend," (which I frequently compared this story too because the overall concept was the same) this novel ends on a non-conclusive but hopeful note. Perhaps Matt and Rebecca (and the unborn baby) make it somewhere and survive. Perhaps George and Chester arrive at their destination unharmed.

But the entire premise of the book makes their survival unlikely. The ending wasn't satisfying for me and I can't describe why. It was like a thread hanging from a web...not part of the symmetrical construction, and not completely free. In the end, I wanted to be convinced that mankind would prevail, that this new world order would diminish. I wanted to believe that the human species would go on despite a massive global anomaly. But how long does it take before an anomaly becomes the norm? How long does it take before the web of life that has changed world structure is no longer something terrible and unexplainable, but is instead, a new breeding ground for the acceptable? One thing is for sure... change bites.


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[Starlight Kid · Rating 1 out of 5]

Way to cheesy, cliched and predictable.

[Roxie Gallinger · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was good until around the pages of 150, then it seemed to fall apart.