Campbell's Reviews > The Ruins

** spoiler alert ** Wow, what a disappointment. I'd been so excited about this-- I'm not a horror novel fan, but this had gotten such great reviews, I figured I'd give it a try. The trailer for the movie also looked intriguing. Unfortunately, you may as well just watch the trailer and read the first forty pages of the book, because beyond that, it doesn't deliver.
My first issue with the book was the characters-- they're the most one dimensional people I've come across in long time. Goldilocks had more personality. It's hard to feel a whole lot of sympathy or empathy for characters who are nothing more than stock types-- "the ditzy sexy girl"; " the boy scout" etc. Smith acknowledges their single dimensions midway through the book when the characters are talking about a film version of their situation and one of the character breaks them all down into types ("the boy scout" "the prissy girl" "the slut" "the funny guy"). Too bad Smith never makes the effort to flesh the characters out. It's hard to get too worked up about their deaths when you don't feel like there's anything at stake.
The second problem (and a far bigger one, in my opinion), is the lack of pay off. Early in the book, the characters end up stranded on a mountain, kept captive by a Mayan village who forces them to stay on the mountain with this monster plant. Yeah, yeah, the plant's terrible, it's carnivorous and smart and is able to torture and kill it's captives. Once I got to the point in the book where it's clear the characters are stuck on the mountain, I thought, "I sure hope the next 400 pages aren't spent just detailing how these people die. I sure hope we solve the mystery of where the plant came from, why the Mayans are in collusion with it, and if it's truly a plant at all or an extension of something much more ominous below the surface." So if you ask yourself the same questions and think you'll get answers later in the book, save yourself the time. None of those things are answered and it is, in fact, 400 pages of describing each of their demise.
Part of the problem stems from Smith's tactic of only writing from the point of view of the American characters. If the characters were interesting, it might be worthwhile to see how they handle this awful and confusing situation, but we've already addressed that these folks are pretty dull. I think a more interesting approach would've been to either tell part of the story from the Mayan's point of view or from an omniscient POV, detailing the history of why such a malevolent force is at work in this spot. Maybe my perception was skewed from the film trailers in thinking that this might be revealed.
I found the book frustrating because the characters briefly seem to be going in this direction, mentioning how the Mayans have contained the plant and guessing at why they continue to hold people captive here. They also touch on the fact that the plant may not be a plant at all. Unfortunately, Smith doesn't explore these ideas either through speculation on the characters' parts or by having the characters physically seek out the source of the plant. Sure, it may be unbelievable that the characters would risk their lives trying to find the source, but believability went out the window when the plant started talkig. Smith already set up that the characters are boring,not so bright, and going to die anyway, so why not have them die in the pursuit of what this thing actually is?
Overall, I thought the book was pisspoor. The first 40 pages are good, the story is tightly wound and propulsive, but after that, you may as well watch any generic slasher flick.