Mandibles Paperback – June 30, 2003

I didn’t start reading Jeff Strand’s stuff until around 2014 or so. His rendition of the 3 Little Pigs was in a horror anthology and it drew me in immediately! LOVE this guy!!! I finally got caught up with all his newer stuff so am now closing out his oeuvre by reading the earlier works. This book was def a fun read and hints at the brilliance to come! Kinda got a feeling that this could almost be considered a prequel to Clowns vs. Spiders!

HHmmm, As described this story is about ants, ants of different species.Scientists decide to experiment (as usual) on God's creatures and not for the betterment of man. Only the plan is started ahead ot time. First there are only a few, a few fire ants. Except their venom has also been tampered with and it only takes one bite. Now imagine being covered by them. All they want is your blood, all of your blood. Is there anywhere you can hide that ants can't get into ? Can you feel them crawling on your skin ? You may escape the small ones but what if bigger ones show up, where can you hide ? Can you out run them ?This was a good story, at times I felt like they were crawling on me while the characters were being devoured, bite by agonizing bite.These are my personal opinions & thoughts about the book. Read it and judge for yourself.Thank you for reading my review, I hope it helps.

I'm guessing Jeff Strand is a huge fan of B-movies like THEM! Similar in frenetic pacing to Strand's WOLF HUNT, this one gets right into the ant vs. man carnage. Because so many different characters are introduced in the beginning I found it a bit harder to connect to anybody until additional scenes from characters already seen started happening. If you can stay with it, things become more cohesive.Dustin, the entomologist, appears to be the primary protagonist, but he shares a lot of time with a couple other characters. Dustin is known as "the ant expert" by my two favorite criminal characters, Hack and Slash. Hack and Slash are pure Jeff Strand mad scientist creations. Few authors compare in the ability to make unlikable characters like these two miscreants (somewhat) likable, or at least enjoyable as a guilty pleasure. In many of Strand's books, you'll find curious characters like these who are on the wrong side of the law and the author makes you want to follow their misadventures.The body count is high in this one and there are more than a few surprise twists. The humor is a little toned down in favor of some scenes that literally crawl. People you think will live die and people you think will die live, which is another credit to the excellent story telling. I didn't love this like some other Strand books (PRESSURE, DWELLER, WOLF HUNT, THE SINISTER MR. CORPSE), but it's a very strong four star read and recommended for those in the mood for a good killer insect read.

Synopsis: Fire ants made giant via bio-engineering have start a mass invasion of a small town. Everywhere one looks rivers of ants swarm the ground, each one with a poteintially deadly sting. The plot is mainly set in the perspective of 3 parties: a dentist office, employees trapped in thier office building, and an entemologist involved in a robbery of a convinence store by two homocidal maniacs. All three parties have one common atribute: they are trapped, and are desperatly trying to elude the hostile ivertibrates.Review: This is a decent creature feature in any sense: we have characters, creatures, and characters being killed by the creatures with some mild action and suspence thrown into the mix. It is not by any standard a superior or even intelligent novel, but it is entertaining, despite the fact that the whole overgrown ants plot device is very overdone. One thing that anoyed me is when they introduce the larger ants the size of dogs, and later buses. As many people well know the ant's anotomy is not designed to become this large and surely no such specimens could exist, but the thought of rivers of angry fire ants is belivable if not practical. In addition, this book releases many forms of comady relife so it creates the illusion that one is watching a B-movie. This helps the reader not take the book as seriously and therefore makes some of the more ridiculous parts easiar to swallow, such as the giant homocidal butterflies (don't ask). The ending was somewhat anti-climatic and didn't conclude earlier parts of the novel, but was decent and will not leave the reader saying "what about..." and going on a mad rampage searching for a sense of conclusion.Grade:BRecommendations: creature feature fans; but not entemologists for they will simply be infruiated by the impossible arthropods in this novel.Cost: I paid for a new copy of this novel and frankly, didn't look back afterwards.

If this were a 1950s b-movie, it would probably be titled “Attack of the Killer Ants” which pretty much describes the story of giant mutated fire ants eating people and terrorizing a city.This is a fast paced, plot driven, horror novel featuring zany characters and descriptive scenes of carnage all written with a touch of humor.I can't resist a good monster tale and I recommend to anyone who enjoys stories featuring creatures, and there are creatures other than ants in this one, running amok.

Not his best but filled with pithy one liners. Dry humour and was I the only one screaming in a girly ant voice , get it off me . God get it off me, when Jack was riding the ant and it tried to buck him off? Quite an amusing read and par for ant, bee or spider invasions.

After reading the excellent Wolf Hunt, I was curious to read more of Jeff Strand's work, so I plumped for Mandibles. Giant ant attack, I thought, what's not to like?Although it does have some of the same sense of humour that made Wolf Hunt such an enjoyable read, the plot is (believe it or not, given the subject matter) just a little bit too pedestrian to carry you along. There's a few too many of the standard old B Movie/Disaster Novel tropes in there, and, while the writing is fast-paced and often witty, it just feels a bit like the author's going over well-worn territory and not really breaking any new ground. Which is a shame, because I was really looking forward to reading this book when I bought it. It just didn't deliver what I was expecting.So not bad, but not the fun and funny disater-fest I was hoping for. Still worth a read, though.

Giant ants overrun Florida!! Giant stinging ants!! And I mean giant!!Sometimes you just need some fun in journey life, and I for me this provided fun in bucket loads. This novel is the literary equivalent of all the bad things your not supposed to eat, but that taste oh so very good.As you can tell I really enjoyed this book, it felt like I gave my mind a break and allowed it to spectacularly veg out. But this is a good thing! The book is all the b movie horror that you can imagine, but was still well written. Highly recommended for those who just want to be entertained.

This was the first book I read by Jeff Strand and it won't be the last. The first thing i noticed about this book was the style in which it is written. Strand has a way of making you feel that you know the charactors really early on and although its horror he also has a way of slipping in some light hearted jokes that had me laughing out loud. If you enjoy creature featuers this ranks up there with the best of them. It has a really 80s b-movie feel about it. In the same vein as Clickers by Gonzalez.

Such a fun read with lots of laughs along the way so glad I took a chance with this one i wasnt disappointed.