Book review
Written by David Moody
Gollancz paperback
Release date 19 February 2009

Unexplained and unprovoked violence begins to spread around the UK...

David Moody's self-published novel has been picked up by Gollancz, and is in the process of being turned into a major movie, courtesy of Guillermo del Toro. It's an odd novel, which starts off as what seems a generic world's-going-to-shit tale and develops into something quite different.

The early sections, in which the violence starts to escalate, suffer from too many vignettes. The first hundred pages feel like a retread of James Herbert's The Fog, complete with over the top descriptions of people succumbing to the effects. It feels like chapter of plot, chapter of violence, chapter of plot...

But as the novel continues, and the narrator becomes trapped with his family in his own flat, the style changes, and some thought-provoking questions are raised, taking Hater beyond the 28 Days Later/Survivors hybrid that it initially appears to be. There's a level of increasing paranoia which catapults the book into its final section, and some form of explanation as to what's happening – which you really don't need by that stage, as the world created clearly has its rules. Paul Simpson

VERDICT: 7/10
Hater takes the reader on an uncomfortable journey but a powerful one.