The Troop by Nick Cutter REVIEW

 Summary:

Once every year, Scoutmaster Tim Riggs leads a troop of boys into the Canadian wilderness for a weekend camping trip - a tradition as comforting and reliable as a good ghost story around a roaring bonfire. The boys are a tight-knit crew. There's Kent, one of the most popular kids in school; Ephraim and Max, also well-liked and easygoing; then there's Newt the nerd and Shelley the odd duck. For the most part, they all get along and are happy to be there - which makes Scoutmaster Tim's job a little easier. But for some reason, he can't shake the feeling that something strange is in the air this year. Something waiting in the darkness. Something wicked . . .

It comes to them in the night. An unexpected intruder, stumbling upon their campsite like a wild animal. He is shockingly thin, disturbingly pale, and voraciously hungry - a man in unspeakable torment who exposes Tim and the boys to something far more frightening than any ghost story. Within his body is a bioengineered nightmare, a horror that spreads faster than fear. One by one, the boys will do things no person could ever imagine.

My Thoughts:

I decided to pick up this book due to the amount of horror fans raving about it. Unfortunately, it did not live up to the hype for me.

There is no one main character; everyone shares the spotlight. Tim is a doctor, so when he sees the sickly stranger on the island, he tries to help him and figure out what is wrong. The man will eat anything - literally - but is still deathly thin. And what he has is contagious, and Tim is the first to get infected. It is an engineered parasite inside of the infected that takes all of the food from their bodies. Max, Eph, and Newt are by far the most likeable characters besides Tim. For the most part, they keep to their morals, unlike the rest. Kent and Shelley are extremely polarizing characters. Kent is kind of a bully, but he's fine until he gets infected. The issue is that Kent doesn't want to isolate himself from the others when he knows that he is infected. Shelley is just downright a terrible person, both on the island and at home. At home, he gets off by killing animals, and on the island, he gets off on killing his groupmates. Max ends up being the sole survivor.

In between chapters, there are articles and interviews about the genetically modified worms. The doctor who started the experiment is on trial, and he refuses to take responsibility for his work. Then there's the army, who are quarantining the kids on the island. They don't care at all about the fact that they are pretty much killing children. The stranger on the island was part of the experiment, but he ran away, and it is hinted that someone let him escape.

Max is obviously traumatized by the events. His friends and groupmates are all dead, and there was nothing he could do about it. So it makes sense that he isn't exactly right in the head and suppresses his memories so that he can't think about it.

This book is reminiscent of Lord of the Flies, but not really memorable in any way. It's basically Lord of the Flies but with a contagious disease. It just doesn't stand out or on its own. It wasn't different enough to really land well.

My Rating: 3 stars