Book Review: Ant Apocalypse by Will Swardstrom

Unnatural Disasters
by Daniel Pyle (Editor)

Publisher: DeadPixel Publications
Release Date: 14 September 2013
ASIN: B00F7E77WS
Format: Kindle book
Pages: 62
Genre: Horror; Short Story
Time to read: 1 hour
Source: Amazon (Free at the time; One Hundred Free Books) [27 September 2013]
aStore Link: Ant Apocalypse

Summary
(from Goodreads)

Rick and his wife, Jennifer have just moved to a house in Kentucky.The only problem is -- the previous occupants never left.

Ants.

Regular, everyday ants are one thing. But what do you do when they develop a taste for flesh? How do you kill ants that are already dead? 

Ant Apocalypse is a short story about one man's struggle with the bane of the Midwest -- ants.

My Reaction

This is one of the first books I discovered through One Hundred Free Books, a site which lists free Kindle books available on Amazon. However, it took me a while to read it as I was getting used to the whole digital book thing.

This was a pretty quick and fun read, but I felt the book could have used a good copy editor. I was also a bit distracted by the constant reference (from page one) to the narrator's impending demise. I guess there was good reason for a few references, but it seemed a bit forced by the fourth or fifth occasion. 

I did have a local interest in reading this story as the fictional "Frankland County, Kentucky" setting is actually not too different from the part of Kentucky across the river from me. I had to laugh with familiarity when the narrator described the mobile home they moved into,  including the description of what we call "underpinning"; whether that is the actual word for it I can never tell because our rural area tends to use words for things that people from a few counties away would find confusing.

The meat of the story—gratuitous numbers of ants invading a newlywed couple's new home in a new town—is very familiar to me, and invading insects is one of my nightmares. Several places in the narrative gave me those goosebumps of ickiness. The climax fed into the current craze of the living dead (referenced in the book's synopsis above), of which I am not a huge fan; but it was used just enough to freak me out.

I can recommend this for a quick scare. I would certainly like to read some of Swardstrom's other books now that I have been introduced to his work.

Reading Challenges: 2014 Read Your Freebies! Challenge

For more information on this book:

Will Swardstrom's Website

Amazon (Kindle Version Only)