THE RUINS by Scott Smith (Finished)

The Ruins is such a good beginning of spring book. Up here in Minnesota it is still really cold. Yes, cold. So, it was nice to read a book set in the heat of Mexico, with beaches, cocktails, and tropical rains.

Wait! What novel am I talking about? The Ruins is thrill fest of desperation. The first good half of the book was slow, sometimes painfully slow as we learn about each of the characters, where they are from, why they are in Mexico, who is sleeping with who, etc. The character development was good, intertwined with the action and plot. However, it was a little too heavy for me. I kind of knew that they were all going to die from page one. I was anxious for the deaths to start.

Death one, of the main character group, was on pages 378 – 386. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of other great stuff happened before someone we are supposed to care about dies. I’m just saying that waiting 378 pages for the killing to happen was a long time.

The monster, if you don’t all ready know, I’m going to spoil it for you here, is a plant, Little Shop of Horrors style. I love this plant. It is the perfect villain. Not only is the plan filled with extremely acidic sap that can burn though cloths and skin, but it moves and thinks like a predatory animal. Its flowers can mimic anything it hears, like speech, birds, and then somehow reorganize what it hears to horrific effect. These flowers can also produce any aroma that it has encountered, pie, fresh bread, and grilled meat, to make starving stomachs tighten and grumble.

In most horror stories, I find myself cheering on the monster. I want everyone to die, die, die. However, in this story, I was hopping that someone got away; someone helped the plant escape its confinement to the ruins. You know, a sequel of grand proportions: The Plant versus New York. However, The Ruins does not go down that gimmicky road. Instead it reaffirms that there are some things left in this world that you can’t escape from.

The sequel, however, is staged at the end of the book as a new group of hot young people march unknowingly up the hill to their doom. Also, there is the opportunity for the parents of all these young people to fall pray to the plant as the desperately try to discover what has happened to their sons and daughters.

I will just have to wait and see.

I sure hope that the movie lives up to the book. I know that this rarely happens, but the book is perfect for a movie. Don’t change a thing and it will be perfect!

Smith, Scott. The Ruins. New York: Vintage, 2007.