My Journey to Become Pretentiously Literate

"The Ruins" is paced well enough to make for an entertaining and chilling weekend read, but its source of conflict is exhaustively hopeless and its cast is too unlikeable to stick with you for long.

I stumbled upon "The Ruins" in search of nature-related horror. My favorite genre of horror involves the unknown: being lost in the woods, hunted by some unseen entity. "The Ruins" didn't quite fit this quota. It's more along the lines of survivalist horror, and unlike most stories I've read, it's set in a small, isolated area...far too little wandering for my taste. The mystery is developed fairly quickly, so most of the horror revolves around the deteriorating conditions our heroes must go through. This is not a gratuitously gory book, but it's not for the faint of heart either.

One of the things I appreciated most about this book was Smith's ability to write an interesting narrative. After slumping into a reading block trying to parse through books by Murakami and Pynchon, "The Ruins" was exactly the kind of book I needed: fast, interesting, and easy to digest. The book opens and gets off to a quick start, weaving exposition and background information in a way that's easy to read. Smith devotes significant amounts of time to showing us what's going on inside his protagonists' heads, but often he does so by showing their reactions to the plot progression rather than pausing the plot for pointless introspection.

"The Ruins" focuses on the thoughts and feelings of our small cast. The horror of the plot is mostly psychological and relies heavily on the characters. Nine out of ten readers are going to tell you this book is awful because the characters are insufferable. Well, they are insufferable, but they're believable, and their stupidity is what keeps the plot going. Our four narrators are a group of friends whose relationships seem to be fading; half of them are dating, but they show more affection to the people who aren't their partners. The characters' interactions are depressing.

My main issue with the book was the complete lack of hope I had for the characters throughout the story. They face many small struggles that come with a bigger overall conflict, and they work hard to take care of those little issues, but there's very few attempts to solve the big problem. It makes a whole arc of the story seem pointless and disheartening. This is not a happy story - this is a story that will wear you down.

Three stars for a quick, easy read. If you're discouraged by the negative reviews on this site, go ahead and give it a try; it won't take long.