Luca Turin at The Guardian:
Dino Martins’ book is a fascinating compendium of all the critters, some big, some small, some harmless and some lethal, that lie in wait for unsuspecting warm-blooded creatures. It unfolds along four separate writerly tracks. The first consists of lyrical descriptions of nature itself written by a keen observer in love with what he sees. The lyricism extends to scenes of horror: wonderful prose, for example, comes from a description of a rotting elephant carcass in Kenyan noon sunlight, slowly dissolved by a mass of maggots. “A boiling cauldron of maggot stew undulates in steamy waves,” and Martins gleefully cups his hands in the liquefying flesh to sample maggot species while drily noting that the air “shimmers and stinks”. The tone then switches from the lyrical to the taxonomic, listing genera and orders of the various beasties involved. Martins marvels, and so does the reader, at the creativity of nature.
more here.
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