The Troop....

The Troop by Nick Cutter

Hardcover, 368 pages

Expected publication: January 7th 2014 by Gallery Books

ISBN

1476717710 (ISBN13: 9781476717715)

edition language

English

This book reminded me of Lord Of The Flies meeting Contagion meeting Anything and everything by Stephen King.

I loved the fact that the boys on the Island remained boys.  Their conversations were mundane and age appropriate while the fact that they were growing up were immediately obvious.

The boys might as well have been a cross section of demographic groups the world over.  You have the Jock.  The chubby nerd. The inbetweener that is neither a Jock nor a nerd but whom seems to be destined to become THE COOL Kid nonetheless.  You have a young budding psychopath with some kills to his name but thus far no homo sapiens.  Thus far.  Then you have the boy with guts and a back bone.  Together this troop has to survive against a perfect monster created in a lab….

The characters are predictable and this makes the story all the more chilling.  The boys are introduced as a group and then the reader is afforded the opportunity to get to know the boys via their past and their role within the group. 

As the situation on the Island deteriorates with the boys and their mental and physical battles so do the structures on the Island.  Soon the world building and character forming is a perfect reflection of the one or the other.

I said above that the characters are stereotype and I kid you not.  The story itself is also to a degree predictable.  What is not is the emotional involvement the author awakened in me.  I cannot remember ever wanting a boy to die as much as I did in this book.  I have seldom before rooted this much for the boys to make it to the main land and the one scene that will forever be with me is the beach scene with the turtle.  I almost cried and No I won't say why.  I hated the boys in that scene although I fully comprehended what and why they were doing what they were doing. 

Who should read this? Psychological thriller lovers and horror lovers.  This is almost a perfect 50/50 split between horror and thriller. 

According to me, this is a must read.  Don't take my word for it though. 

Read it yourself. 

WaAr