2.0 out of 5 stars
Some suspense, but mostly boring--and no ruins!, March 14, 2011
This review is from: The Ruins Movie Tie-In (Audio CD)
Stephen King's enthusiastic endorsement persuaded me to purchase the abridged, 6-hour audiobook version of Scott Smith's novel The Ruins, read by actor Patrick Wilson.
The story is about six young people who get trapped on a vine-covered isolated hill surrounded by miles of Mexican jungle, a place where Stuff Gets Weird and Bad Things Happen. The plot situation for isolating the characters is done off-handedly and mechanically, but once the protagonists are stuck on the hill, the book delivers some scary and suspenseful scenes. Early on, however, the suspense wears off, and the book becomes boring, even excruciating. I stuck it out to the end, hoping for some kind of clever ending, but there was none. It just faded away.
The author does not seem to like his six characters. Few have any redeeming qualities. None of them are memorable characters in any way except one. They consistently act stupidly--sometimes so stupidly I laughed out loud. SPOILER ALERT: For example, it is not much of a spoiler to reveal that the characters' nemesis is a killer vine. We readers, and the characters, learn this early on. But in spite of the danger represented by the vine, the characters never try to do anything to it. They never try to destroy it, to significantly harm it, or even to protect themselves from it. In fact, every night the characters go to sleep in a vine-infiltrated tent, even though that every night they do this, the vine attacks one of them. They never even try to eradicate the vine from the tent. (It reminded me of Beowulf, when the king's warriors drink and sleep in the great hall Heorot every night, even though every night the monster Grendel invades the hall and kills people. After a few bad nights, you'd think the warriors would sleep somewhere else.) SPOILER OVER.
Author Smith attempts many times to induce suspense by having everything stop. We wait for paragraphs or pages while the characters stop and think to themselves. This happens frequently even when sudden crises erupt; the characters don't respond, they freeze and ruminate. Then they react, but it is too late. There are no exciting action sequences in this book; potentially exciting activities are ruined by this frozen tableau phenomenon, which I have never encountered so frequently in any other book.
I read or listen to more than 100 books every year, and it is rare for one to make me angry. But The Ruins did just that. I was angry with the writer, angry that the publishers' editorial staff did not work with the writer to salvage a concept that had potential, angry with the stupid characters, angry with Patrick Wilson for reading the book in a slow, heavy, breathy voice, and angry for the misleading title. Why call a novel The Ruins when it has no ruins in it?
Fortunately, I endured only the abridged version of this book. I am grateful I did not wade through the full-length version. You have been warned.
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