Review: The ants come marching in...
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 09 22, 2013
By turns darkly humorous and downright disturbing, Ant Apocalypse by Will Swardstrom is a novella that reminded this reader of the works of a young Stephen King. Similar to King's short story "Uncle Otto's Truck" (found in the anthology "Skeleton Crew"), Swardstrom employs a voiceless antagonist to tweak the atmosphere and ratchet up tension as the story unfolds. In this case the antagonist is the eponymous ants, who relentlessly harry and torment the narrator through a series of increasingly uncomfortable encounters. What begins as a slow, almost invisible invasion quickly overwhelms Rick, a young husband and father-to-be who is clearly out of his element when it comes to the many-legged army laying siege to his new home. Outnumbered and overrun, Rick is forced to resort to drastic measures to protect what is most dear to him. With his signature tight prose and unique setup, Swardstrom demonstrates once again why he is an emerging talent on the independent author scene worth watching (and reading).