ZOOLOO’S BOOK TOURS | THE NEST | CONRAD JONES
ZOOLOO’S BOOK TOURS | THE NEST | CONRAD JONES
ABOUT THE BOOK
The Nest; New York
The 36th novel from acclaimed author Conrad Jones
It’s 2025. Beneath the glittering towers of Manhattan, something is stirring in the dark. Homeless people are vanishing from the forgotten subway tunnels, their absence buried beneath bureaucracy and political indifference. Garbage trucks sit idle in picket lines. The nutrias, huge water rats—once bred for fur—are now being bred for something far worse.
Carnage.
Larger. Smarter. Organized. Hungry...
As the city teeters on the edge of chaos, the truth begins to emerge: this is no infestation. This is an invasion.
REVIEW
OK! Let’s get this out of the way before we start, shall we? The Rats!
There done!
Now, let’s crack on shall we?
Conrad Jones’s The Nest does what it says on the tin. It immediately grabs you by the throat, flings you about like a rag doll and leaves your nerves shredded on the floor next to you. What more do you want? Well there’s lots more you can do, but Jones opts for the lean, mean and pick the bones clean approach with his 36th novel The Nest, a high concept creature thriller that fuses techno thriller mechanics with more than just a flash of full on splatter. Nobody is safe in this book. No one! So if you have a queasy stomach, be warned, because the book does have blood and gore in abundance, regardless of age.
From page one, Jones yanks the elastic band back and lets the plot fly. Hang on tight — or get off at the next stop (mind the killer rats).
The plotting is tight and unapologetically functional. Once the threat emerges, the story becomes a chain reaction of escalating crises, near misses and bursts of gore that are designed to propel the plot forward to its conclusion.
Favouring momentum rather than emotional depth, The Nest is a book that defines its characters more for their role in the ensuing disaster rather than their complex, psychological inner workings. Ultimately, they are there as part of the plot, and whilst there is a smidgeon of emotional depth to the main protagonist, the depth is saved more for the main characters in the book…the rats, and anyone looking for a more character focussed story would be best looking somewhere else. This is not to say that they don’t add character, but primarily, The Nest is a situational horror whose main entertainment focus is in building tension and burning its path towards an explosive ending.
Jones masterfullly builds the tension in the the story. The pace rarely slackens, resembling an Irwin Allen disaster movie (particularly 1978’s The Swarm with Michael Caine), and the creature chaos, coupled with frequent burst of eye wincing splatter, gives the novel a visceral kick. The prose is punchy, direct and highly readable, favouring short, effective chapters and set pieces rather than falling into masses of exposition and info dumping which maintains the propulsive trajectory of the story.
The Nest is a super tense creature feature thriller with some gnarly splatter moments and a big ‘just one more chapter’ energy. Ridiculously bingeable!
NB: if you want a song to go with this book I highly recommend CHEW by JELLO BIAFRA & NOMEANSNO from their album THE SKY IS FALLING AND I WANT MY MOMMY!
Play it and you will see what I mean!
The Nest is out now. You a buy it HERE or had it to your Goodreads list.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Conrad Jones spent 12 years working for the biggest quick service restaurant brand in the world.
On March 20th 1993 the IRA terrorist organization bombed the shopping center outside the restaurant he was managing that day. The experience fueled an interest in the root causes of extremist terrorists and the reasoning why its perpetrators feel justified in taking innocent lives. That incident sparked the story of 'Soft Target'.
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