The Ruins

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction	4-week checkout	Due 05-04-2024

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Not spectacular. But solid. submitted by eknapp on July 2, 2012, 2:27pm Four college students vacationing in Cancun trek out to an archaeological dig in the jungle and are trapped by Mayan villagers on a hill covered by a strange, deadly plant.

My first impression of The Ruins was that it was written by a high school student. It read for a while like a simple, endless series of declarative sentences.

This feeling gradually faded as I got to know the characters. They--the English-speaking ones anyways--made the book for me. The point-of-view cycles amongst all four of the students--sometimes switching mid-event--allowing them each to be drawn quite well. The details of the characters, their idiosyncrasies and insecurities, felt very real.

The one part of the characterizations that gave me pause: while the girls were weak, helpless, and mostly useless, the guys were all at some point heroic. I'm not one of those folks who think women and minorities in fiction should only be drawn as brain surgeons and starship captains (to paraphrase Scott Adams) but the hard line between feminine helplessness and masculine resourcefulness was too stark. It's a minor complaint though.

I liked the mystery behind the setting and the antagonist; I loved that Smith addressed some of the questions that had already been running through my mind but didn't try to answer them. This was one of those cases where the questions are more interesting, more fun than the answers.

The gore toward the end of the book was almost-but-not-quite too much for me; the tension at that point was so high that I couldn't put the book down. The ending felt right. Solidly 4 stars.

the ruins submitted by hcf on July 28, 2014, 3:13pm CREEPY!!!

Unusual Events submitted by me11yagn on August 26, 2019, 6:21pm This was a creepy novel that talked about the mysterious ruins. I liked how suspenseful the novel was and how the characters were faced with difficult decisions.

Overrated submitted by Sydneyhb on June 10, 2022, 12:37pm I had high-ish expectations for this book, it sounded like a fun, creepy read, but it drags eternally onward, getting slower as the book progresses. The characters are really unlikeable, and not in a good way. The women especially…. Just feel very much written by a man. I couldn’t finish it. Don’t read it.