The Ruins
I finished the Ruins about a week and half ago. It took me longer than usual to read it for a number of reasons. First, it was long, duh. Second, it wasn’t all that exciting and at the end I was only turning the pages because a book has to absolutely terrible for me to put it down once I’ve given it the 50 page chance. After the first 50 pages, the Ruins was still busy introducing the lives of the characters who wouldn’t last into a sequel – oops, spoiler. Really, the only reason I finished was because I needed to know whether or not they would ever get back to something I thought was a key plot element mentioned soon after the group realized they were hosed.
The Basic Plot:
Stupid college grads go on vacation in Mexico. They hook up with some non-English speaking (or Spanish speaking) European students and find themselves trying to track down another guy they don’t know because he was one of the foreign kids’ brother. Apparently, the brother hooked up with some female archaeologist that was exploring some Mayan Ruins. They started with a crudely drawn map and took a bus to a small town where they took a cab to the trail head. The cabbie tried to warn them, but they are stupid foreigners. The wander down the path, miss their turn and end up in a Mayan village where no one even talks to them. They backtrack down the trail and eventually find a deliberately concealed trail. Soon, they find a hill with all sorts of jungley plants growing on it, but are stopped by some Mayans. One of the stupid girls in the group (which consists of two stupid girls and three stupid boys) steps on the a piece of jungle on the hill while trying to take a picture of the group being threatened by the Mayans and its all down hill from there. Actually, once she touches the jungle vines, the Mayans don’t ever let the group leave. They have to climb the little hill. The Mayans set up camp at the bottom of and all around the hill and threaten to kill them if they leave. When they find the decimated remains of the one foreign guy’s brother, they realize that the Mayans mean business.
At the top of the hill they find the “ruins” which really consists of an old mine shaft. There are also some little remnants of the archaeologists who died before. Soon, they decide to explore the mine – which is vertical, like a well. Once the first guy gets halfway down, he rope breaks and he falls to the bottom and breaks his back. But – remember this part – on the way down, he saw an shaft about halfway down the hole but continued on down the shaft and fell. Eventually they rescued him.
Long story short: The survivors delusionally think that someone will come looking for them if they live long enough. The vine is alive and slowly stalking them. At night it creeps onto them and eats their clothes, and pushed itself into open wounds. The sap of the vine is acidic and burns them. Despite the efforts of their resident Eagle Scout, they all die. One dies trying to escape – the Mayans kill him. One girl gets suffocated/strangled by the vine in the night while her boyfriend sat nearby and sulked about their recent argument. The other girl dies, but I forget how – maybe she drank herself silly (because they wisely brought tequila). Eventually everyone gets eaten by the vine. Then, finally, the Mayans can go home (because they were guarding the hill to make sure no one got off). Three days after the last guy – no wait, it’s the girl – the girl who I mentioned might have drank herself to death – she dies when she goes down to the Mayans, has some alcohol and slits her wrists. The Mayans are grateful and pack up their camping gear while she bleeds all over the hill. So, three days after that, other people they knew back at their resort find the hill – and walk on up.
In school news:
I had an assignment to write a 2-3 page paper about the vision and success strategy for my chosen agency (a US Army Cavalry Squadron). My paper ended up being 11 pages. A bit longer than required, but I think it was effective.
Our oldest daughter had a birthday yesterday – she’s now 12 going on 19. She’s spoiled, but she has her moments of intelligence. Tomorrow she is going out to teach people about bears with her Girl Scout friends.
We went on a great bike ride today down to our Geocache on Slevin Island. When we planted the cache a few months ago, the terrain there was much different. Some of the changes are that the bridge used to cross the water is gone, the mosquitoes are thick and the tree that the cache is actually hiding in is surrounded by icky water. We had to replace the log today because the old one got wet and icky. The whole round trip on the bikes was about 5.5 miles. Sarahann needs a new bike because every time we go out I wonder whether her tire will get her home. Its old and cracked and fraying at the edges.
On another positive note, she’s been quit smoking for about 60 days now! Wow. That’s a long time. Chantix is good stuff, but it makes her sicky sick and nauseous, so she hasn’t even taken that for the last four days or so. Doing great!
Oh, remember how I said to “remember this part” up there in the reviews about “The Ruins”? Well, forget it, that was the great plot point I kept expecting to get brought back up, but never was – wasn’t even ever mentioned again! That stupid hole was the only reason I read the last half of the book! Usually, I think the book is always better than the movie, but I suspect the movie for “The Ruins” will be much better than the book. And even if its not, at least it will be less of a waste of time. Oh, and my apologies to the guy who actually wrote “The Ruins” – I may not like your book, but its better than any books I’ve ever had published – zero. So, you’re at least one step ahead of me. Two actually. If you believe that Stephen King actually read your book and gave it a good review like it says on the cover.
