Shannon’s Reviews > A Living Nightmare > Status Update

I'm going to regret being awake still but I can't stop reading. If you want something quick to read that will keep you glued to your seat (or in this case, glued to my bed reading in the dark) then definitely give this story a chance. It's not the greatest literature ever written but it's different and interesting and I don't hate the characters: sometimes that's all I ask for.

I didn't know what she was doing at first, so I craned my neck to see. When I saw the bits of white on Mr. Crepsley's lips I understood: she was spinning a web! When she was finished, she lowered herself from his chin, like she had before. There was a large web spun across Mr. Crepsley's mouth. He began chewing and licking the web! He ate the whole thing and said, "Delicious. Nothing tastier than fresh spiderwebs."

"You will be okay," Mr. Tall told her. "The stitches will fall out after a couple of days. It will be fine after that."

"Maybe that's not good enough!" someone shouted, and a big red-faced man stepped forward. "I'm her husband," he said, "and I say we should go to a doctor and then the police! What if he'd bitten her head off?"

"Then she would be dead," Mr. Tall said calmly.

I love deadpan humor in horror.

The people in the theater were a mixed bunch.

What everyone shared was a look of excitement.

I could see it in their eyes, the same light that was shining in Steve's and mine. We all somehow knew that we were in for something special, the likes of which we'd never seen before.

(And here's hoping that this same excitement holds up over the course of this 12 book series [and also its 5 prequels].)

I'm not sure how I feel about all of the exclamation points being used! Normally I want excitement to be conveyed, not pointed out to me with obvious punctuation marks! But I liked the first book in one of his other series, Lord Loss (and even commented on his writing style back then, too, apparently,) so I'm willing to overlook it. For now!

In real life, vacuum cleaners kill spiders. If you cross a busy road without looking, you get whacked by a car. If you fall out of a tree, you break some bones.

Real life's nasty. It's cruel. It doesn't care about heroes and happy endings and the way things should be.

In real life, bad things happen. People die. Fights are lost. Evil often wins.

I just wanted to make that clear before I began.

I've always been fascinated by spiders. I had one who made a cobweb above my bed and stood guard for almost a month. Going to sleep, I used to imagine the spider creeping down, crawling into my mouth, sliding down my throat, and laying loads of eggs in my belly. The baby spiders would hatch after a while and eat me alive, from the inside out.

Thought I'd post this in case, you know, you didn't feel like sleeping.