Scott Smith - The Ruins

Pros: Scott Smith's novel is a masterwork of unrelenting dread.

Cons: You could find yourself reading at 3 a.m. and worrying about fictional people.

The Bottom Line: Armed and potentially hostile men encircle six tourists in remote Mexican ruins, but the visitors are threatened by far worse.

Review: Inexorably, The Ruins takes root in the brain's darkest parts. The reader can only watch with awestruck anxiety, waiting to see what fruit it grows. Scott Smith, author of the acclaimed A Simple Plan, starts his horror story in the ...

Pros: Will make you happy you bought it.

Cons: Makes you want to stay home from work.

The Bottom Line: Read this book, then without saying anything about it give it to an unsuspecting someone else...it is that good. Make sure you get it back though, its a keeper.

Review: The sheer horror creeps up on you, when first starting to read I had no idea this book would be such torture. In a very devious way I was lured into liking this book. Starting off in a style of writing I had not experienced before, lots of minutia to ...

Pros: Mutilation caused by evil plants. Creepfest that resonates with intense despondency.

Cons: Take it only as a horror suspense novel, because it hold no serious substantial content.

The Bottom Line: hjktyu

Review: "The Ruins" is Scott Smith's second novel, a horror narrative set in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. The book tells of a group of tourists on vacation in Cancun who encounter a deadly patch of jungle, while searching for Mayan ruins. Much like ...

Pros: evocative atmosphere, creative villian, wild plot, good writing style, draws you in

Cons: poor characterizaton

The Bottom Line: Impacting, although sparsely characterized, this is a must read with a shocking climax.

Review: Come on baby... And we had no fearAnd we ran to him... Then we started to flyWe looked backward and said goodbyeWe had become like they areWe had taken his handWe had become like they are- Blue Oyster Cult ...

Pros: Writing style held my interest. Some elements of the plot.

Cons: Characters not developed enough. Story becomes repetitious and has some plot holes.

The Bottom Line: The Ruins is a modest horror/thriller that has a mixture of strong and weak points. It's not terrible, but has enough shortcomings to make me hesitate recommending it.

Review: Amy was having second thoughts about their foray into the jungle. The trip to a Mexican resort with her boyfriend and another couple had been great up to this point. They even made friends with some Greek tourists and a young man named Mathias, who was ...

Pros: Pretty good read, just not an 'amazing' read in my opinion.

Cons: The blurb from Stephen King made me expect more than what the book delivered imho.

The Bottom Line: If you like horror, check it out; not on the same level as 'The Shining' or 'Misery', but an OK read just the same. Don't read it in a greenhouse.

Review: Maybe I'm getting jaded as I get older. When I see a Stephen King blurb on the jacket of a book that says "The Best Horror Novel of the new century" I expect to be blown away when I'm done with it. This really wasn't the case with 'The Ruins.' ...

Pros: Fast-paced, hard to put down

Cons: Inconclusive ending

The Bottom Line: How could something this good go bad so quickly in the end?

Review: I went into Scott Smith’s The Ruins with high expectations, only to be let down in the last two pages because of a bad ending. Famed author Stephen King has taken a liking to Smith’s work and has endorsed this and his previous novel, A Simple ...

Pros: Good details, believeable dialogue, nice pace, good building tension...

Cons: Shallow characterization, more graphic than it needs to be, unsatisfying conclusion...

The Bottom Line: During your stay in the Yucatan, don't drink the water...and don't read this book.

Review: Let me preface this review by saying that I don't generally read horror or thriller fiction. I read some sci-fi, some historic fiction, and lots of young adult books. Other than that, I'm a non-fiction guy all the way. So for me to venture out into ...

Pros: several richly descriptive passages of lingering tropical menace

Cons: no worthwhile development after the first hundred pages

The Bottom Line: Stephen King done led me wrong.

Review: Stephen King's Cujo must have been written in an era of popular fiction governed by different rules. After all, it seems almost ridiculous today that the plot of nearly an entire novel could still be engaging when it's revolves around a woman and ...

Pros: good (though stereotyped) characterization, believable dialogue, interesting, original premise.

Cons: Smith alludes to answers, but does not deliver. Leaves you disappointed and unfulfilled. Flimsy characters.

The Bottom Line: Characters are stereotypes who are believable to the point of unlikability (weird as it sounds). Good gory scenes, and an interesting premise. However, the story itself is one-sided and predictable.

Review: My boss recommended this book to me. He said his wife could not finish it because it was too scary. Oh, how cool! Not really. Don't get me wrong, I read the whole thing. And I had high hopes for it at first. It isn't divided into chapters, ...