Clickers II: The Next Wave

After reading the original Clickers last month with some friends from the Horror Aficionados group over at Goodreads, many of us decided we wanted to continue on to read the sequel. This one featured Brian Keene as co-author rather than Mark Williams.

While I enjoyed the creature feature aspects of this story, (which I think were actually better than in the original Clickers), I did not enjoy the involvement of politics and religion.

When I'm reading what I think of as a B-movie type book, I want action! I want scrappy, brave characters running all over the place, trying to survive! I want bloody, messy kills! All of this can be found in this tale, true, but layering politics and religion over it took away some of the enjoyment for me. I show more couldn't help but feel that this book was trying to make a statement, and I generally don't like statements in my creature feature reading, other than general environmental ones, which are par for the course in this sub-genre.

Overall, this book was fun and even well written, but I didn't enjoy these serious subjects lumped on top of my Clickers and Dark Ones. show less

Like all good grade B movies, the original CLICKERS novel gets a sequel in the form of CLICKERS II: THE NEXT WAVE. Unlike most sequels though, the story here is just as good as the first one.

It is about ten years after the events in the first book. The government has tried covering up the event at Phillipsport. The truth has been left to conspiracy theorist as all the survivors from that day have been killed or are permanently in hiding. With a familiar catalyst, a hurricane strikes the East Coast and brings with it clickers that are bigger, stronger and more vicious than what was seen before.

Mixed in with some new characters such as a religiously fanatic President and marine biologist at the right spot are some familiar characters from show more the first book. And as before, the characters are really the driving force behind the book. There are the typical victims who are going to die but then the others are the ones that keep you cheering to survive or even booing to die. No matter what way you look at it, the book is pure fun and will be enjoyed! In the time between me finishing the first book and me getting to this book, Gonzalez and Keene have added a fourth book in the series, so I still have two more sequels to read. Yay! show less

Three stars isn't a very high score for me - but I want all fans of the first Clickers book to know that this one is significantly better!
Strangely - it came apart in the last act for me - - but the journey was a lot more fun than round one, and the writing is much better in general. Clearly a more seasoned author and collaboration. The Clickers books are a guilty pleasure for me - and I'll be reading the third book, and maybe the one with zombies, too.

I have to say it wasn't what I was expecting. The politics were thicker than I had anticipated, but not unwelcome. However, the rape scene near the middle read like a 13-year-old's slash fic gone wrong. It wasn't enough to put me off the novel, and the immediate payoff for the character was entertaining enough to make up for the juvenile writing in that one part.