I mentioned this book (or rather implied it) HERE. Perhaps this just came at a point I wanted a good horror novel. Maybe it was one of those moments where the book and reader come together (so lucky Scott Sigler). But I really enjoyed his book Infected.
It’s the usual yarn where of modern scifi where writers, with full understanding of the unlikeliness of interstellar travel, come up with other ways to do it besides big honking spaceships. In this case, it’s spores (nanobot spores, it turns out) that are seeded across the universe and fall to the ground, to latch onto the dominant race (so your doggies and kitties are safe). And once they have you, they start to read your DNA and bootstrap your body’s growth to suit their vast, cool and unsympathetic goals. And hoo boy, what happens next.
I’ll give the author credit – he doesn’t just say that things start to happen in your body. He does a reasonable job in defining how these things take over your various organs, how they enhance your paranoia (so you don’t just run out to the doctor) and work towards their final goal. Worse (or better, from the horror-reader point of view), we follow the case of an ex-football player turned office drone as he struggles (and fights) against his own infection, maiming himself in graphic detail as he works to rid himself, one by one, of these living creatures that are growing inside him. And ugh, in the spirit of Stephen King, there is blood, pus, and eventually an apartment turned into an abattoir. Can you really lose that much blood and not die, even with mother’s little helpers keeping you alive? Dunno. But it was fun.
So you really should check this one out. Blood and guts and unholy possession. Wow.