The Troop Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B00I52R1HA | Format: PDF
The Troop Description
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 bonfre. 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.
And so it begins. An agonizing weekend in the wilderness. A harrowing struggle for survival. No possible escape from the elements, the infected...or one another.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 11 hours and 2 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Audible.com Release Date: February 25, 2014
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00I52R1HA
As a part-time online book reviewer and fulltime editor, I am constantly on the search for talented new faces in the literature world. After hearing about two up-and-coming novels, I am Murphy's Law by C. E. Scott and "The Troop" by Nick Cutter, I decided to check them out, and I instantly understood what all the buzz was about.
"The Troop" is classic pulp and gore horror at its very finest. Take an isolated island, five incoherent boy scouts and their somewhat inapt leader, a stranger who suddenly appears out of nowhere with a deadly parasite consuming his body, and you have yourself an unmerciful tale that takes hold of your fear and doesn't let go
"The Troop" doesn't read like a book from a new author at all. It was more like a novel written by a seasoned veteran in the field, and I was taken back to the first time I read Carrie as I raced through its pages. I swear, if one of the boys possessed psychic abilities, I would have bet my salary that it was written by Stephen King under a pseudonym. But nope, no Richard Bachman here.
The bioengineered tapeworm in this novel is the perfect killing machine. It not only wastes away a person in a matter of hours, but it also alters their thinking process, making the person make rash and tactless decisions (which leads the characters into a horrible downward spiral). It also spreads like no other contagion, through blood, saliva, other bodily fluids, and coughing, and if I was on the island, I would not touch anything that had even been near one of the contaminated. I would have taken my chances and swam through the icy waters surrounding the island, just to be as far away from it as I could.
What could be worse than being stranded on an uninhabited island? How about being stranded there with a deranged lunatic who is infected with highly-infectious parasitic worms. Not enough? Well, how about not just being stranded, but physically trapped there by shadowy military forces who won't let so much as a bird or fish escape its shores. Still not enough? Well, how about being trapped there, fighting the parasitic worms inside you, with an adolescent sociopath who is only too happy to exploit the situation. Still not enough? Well, how about we add a thin layer of conspiracy, with the very tangible suggestion that those military forces are deliberately allowing the horror to play out. Gotcha.
Yes, in a book that's been described as part Lord of the Flies and part 28 Days Later (which isn't a bad comparison, even if it only tells half of the story), The Troop proves to be a throwback to old-fashioned, late 80s, pulp horror, with a little 90s cynicism mixed in. Nick Cutter has crafted a grisly tale here that pulls no punches, and which wastes absolutely no time in getting to the good stuff.
At first, the story structure seems a little odd, especially since it spoils its own ending early on. The bulk of the story takes place in real time, exploring the Boy Scout troop's struggle to survive a situation they barely even understand. Spaced in between chapters, however, is a series of newspaper articles, scholarly pieces, and courtroom transcripts of the inquiry that is destined to follow. Ultimately, however, that second layer of storytelling really enhances the story, adding additional weight to the situation, and creating new doubts and questions for the reader.
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