Reviews

The Ruins by Scott Smith

virginwhocantdrive22's review

dark tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.5

The horror elements are so stupid and campy I just couldn't feel the tension. The pacing is terrible, not a lot happens in the middle of the stories

Spoiler

and every single person dies in the last 20% of the book (there are no chapters for me to refer to). I was hoping for some kind of conflict involving the arrival of the greeks that were supposed to get there latter and the mayans, but it ends with the final girl k*lling herself. 
And the fact that the Mayans didn't want anyone to get to the vines but consistently make the mistake of letting people get there, I thought was really dumb. And, yes, why the hell did no one try to throw the vines at the Mayans? (the movie corrects this mistake, fortunately).

And there's the women written by a man. Stacy is hyper sexual but she acts like a child (the author admitted this aspect of her in the text), so disgusting and misogynistic. I won't mention they're general lack of a personality because the men didn't have much of it either. (No personality, just steriotypes).
All this wouldn't be such a problem for me if it wasn't a fucking brick of a book. Honestly, it would have been like a 3,5 stars as a novela or short story. 

shepherdjack66's review

adventurous dark informative mysterious sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

ryoflame's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I really enjoyed the movie so decided to give the book a go and so glad I did, it's so much more uncomfortable. None of the characters in this were having a good time but I sure was!

cosmicplague's review

dark sad tense

3.75

sharkhouri's review

dark tense medium-paced

• Diverse cast of characters? No

4.0

slmnak48's review against another edition

2.0

I was looking forward to a good horror, but was pretty disappointed in the horror portion of this book. All in all, I just found the novel to be very sad instead of scary.

njfinn's review

3.0

There weren’t actually any ruins.

e1olson's review

dark tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot

---

Content Warnings

Minor: Animal cruelty

mxpringle's review

I had such high expectations for this book because Stephen King was a fan of one of the author's other books, but it really fell short. The horror aspects were good, but unlike King's novels, the characterization was so poor that every single character felt like an NPC. It is written from multiple perspectives, but every perspective could've been the exact same person with how little characterization they each had. 

pillsandthrills's review

5.0

College pals and an unprepared trip to a Mexican Jungle, what could go wrong? In this survivor-type horror novel, friends on a brief trip encounter some strange plants when they stumble upon an eerie patch of land in a Mexican jungle. This story is of survival, hard decisions, and danger!

I simply could not put this book down! This book was not particularly scary, but rather shocking and full of gore. It was one of my favorite reads of the year. If you haven't tried to eco-horror genre, give this a go!