I read The Ruins
on recommendation from my friend Troy. He said that Stephen King oozed over it and, having read it, he thought I might ooze over it too. He was right. I read it in two days, staying up until 5:00 this morning to finish it.
on recommendation from my friend Troy. He said that Stephen King oozed over it and, having read it, he thought I might ooze over it too. He was right. I read it in two days, staying up until 5:00 this morning to finish it. The premise isn't very new--four twentysomethings get in over their heads when they're on vacation in Mexico. With echoes of Wolf Creek
and The Descent 
the four "kids" are set up for disaster from nearly the first page. As the novel progresses, Smith's writing style takes over the technically cliched premise and the reader has no choice but to follow the six characters from Cancun to an archiological dig site in an area of Mayan ruins a half-day's drive from their hotel.
and The Descent the four "kids" are set up for disaster from nearly the first page. As the novel progresses, Smith's writing style takes over the technically cliched premise and the reader has no choice but to follow the six characters from Cancun to an archiological dig site in an area of Mayan ruins a half-day's drive from their hotel.The Ruins is a story of survival...what they find in the Mayan ruins definitely isn't friendly...and overall an excellent study in suspense. Smith grabs readers and doesn't give them a break--no chapters, small white space--until the final page.
2 comments:
I'm sorry, but The Ruins (aka The Shitty, Shitty Ruins) made me angry.
The book dwells on the interaction of characters that I instantly did not give a crap about. And because of this, I didn't really give a crap what happened to them.
I don't see what King saw in it.
But I'm still gonna read Blaze.
I agree about the characters...in fact, I thought about that in roughly the middle of the book when I was thinking "Are they all going to die? Maybe. Probably. Doesn't matter."
I loved the suspense and, yeah I'll say it, the plot. It couldn't be less literary, but as a beach book it's all good.
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