Recently in The Books Category

Scott Smith's A Simple Plan was one of my favourite books of the mid-nineties. The resulting movie of same remains one of my favourites to this day. However, as the years passed with not so much as a short story to follow up his stunning debut, his name kind of faded from my radar. His long-awaited return materializes after twelve years with The Ruins, and it's going to be a long time before anyone forgets his name again.

The Ruins tells the story of six tourists, four Americans, a Greek, and a German. Looking for something off the beaten trail, they agree to follow the German on a search for his errant brother, following a copy of a copy of a map to an archaeological dig. However, as with any good story, things don't go quite as they had planned.

Scott's creation is well-paced and relentless, preying on a number of those same base fears that made The Descent such a success. There is no omnipotent view to give you a chance to catch your breath, no breaks for humor to relieve the tension. I absolutely could not put this book down, reading the bulk of it in one sitting on Saturday, and polishing off the remaining chapters as soon as I woke up on Sunday. The characters are well-written and engaging, not a single one falling back on rote archetypes. The book isn't perfect. As with many works of horror, the fear of the unknown was more frightening than the revelation of the threat, and there were moments towards the end in which I struggled to maintain that all-important suspension of disbelief, wishing that Smith had kept this plan of his just a little more simple. However, the brutal final moments more than made up for any missteps along the way, resulting in a very satisfying read.

A late-arriving must for any summer reading list.

Oh, Raggedy-Man. Good times, man. Good times.

That's right, kids. I finally finished Stephen King's Cell. Consensus? It was good! Not great, but good. I would rank it right around the level of From a Buick 8, with which I found similarly simultaneous praise and fault. In short, is the read worth the time and money? Definitely. But go into it with your expectations tempered, because The Stand, it ain't.

Weighing in on the side of the positive, the entire first half (maybe even first 2/3; I wasn't counting pages, you know?) was outstanding. I absolutely could not put it down. His triumvirate of main characters are, I think, among some of his finest, each of them both flawed and brave in their own ways. The first half of the book follows them on a dark, gory road trip as they seek to reunite Clay with his estranged wife and sun, and gives the reader that same sense of dread felt in his epic works like The Stand, or The Dark Tower series.

But then... something happens. (Spoilers ahead! Click through at your own peril!)

That's right, kids. Time to bust out your brain fork. Today's the day that Stephen "We Knew You Couldn't Stay Away" King releases Cell, a cozy parable of a zombie apocalypse gone awry and the "normies" that that try to avoid the same fate. I'm expecting it on my doorstep this afternoon, and I hope to get back to you with a review by the weekend. (Sorry, Johnny Cash, but the King gets priority.) Bring on the gore, baby.

In other King news, supposedly, we finally have a date for Desperation. They've pushed it back about eight times now, so I'm not going to hold my breath, but it looks like its slated for a one-night (that's right, they've pushed it back to a movie instead of a miniseries too) run on May 18th on ABC. TNT's got a miniseries made up of the shorts in Nightmares & Dreamscapes coming in June as well.

As if this wasn't good news enough, another beloved series is resurrected through comics...