Hide Your Nasal Passages!

SPORE by John Skipp and Cody Goodfellow (2010 Leisure Books--eBook / 2011 Bloodletting Books--tp / 266 pp)
A funky new brand of cocaine has hit the streets of Los Angeles and MAN does it have a real kicker: a rare parasitic fungus that takes over the human host's body AND will. Nearly overnight an army of white pus & slime-drooling creatures are born and stop at nothing to add to their legion (even managing to clog every exit to and from the city). Surviving cops, military and gang-bangers are forced to join forces to survive and keep this uber-lethal outbreak from spreading (and a scientific prediction on how far this can spread is downright scary).
While the second half of SPORE is what you'd expect from Skipp and Goodfellow (i.e. intense violence, non-stop action, and off-the-wall creatures), the first half moved quite slowly and could've easily been cut in half. Our main survivor, Rory (as well as his girl Trixie) are decently done, but in the end I found myself not caring for anyone in this large cast. There's just so much commotion going on around L.A. I felt it overshadowed getting to know anyone here to closely.
SPORE offers a lot of fun if you stick out the slow start and approach it as a lost 70s b-splatter film-meets-classic 50s scifi creature feature (with plenty of blowcaine thrown in the mix). Fans of the authors should enjoy it.(Cover art for the Bloodletting Books trade paperback edition [artwork by Steve Gilberts])