While I know that this book came out in 2006, and had a major-motion picture release of it in 2008, it was only last week that I picked up this book in a used bookstore.  While my usual genre of fiction is adventure, crime fiction, thrillers, I felt a particular calling to dive into a horror novel.  Especially one that Stephen King endorse as the “best horror novel of the new century”.

The first thing I noticed about The Ruins by Scott Smith was the fact that there were no chapters.  Coming in at a whopping 509 pages, this was quite a departure from my usual fare of James Patterson novels where there is a new chapter every two pages.  While I thought that this was an odd convention, I can see now why the author chose to do so.

This novel kicks off and runs at a quick pace.  Never was the prose too lengthy or overly descriptive to the point of wanting to skim read.  I found myself eating up every word.  And I found myself building very vivid and detailed images in my mind of the characters, surroundings, and disturbing plot points.  Let’s just say that usually a novel of this size takes me a good 3 weeks to read, barring my busy schedule.  But I drank deep from this novel and finished it in a little over a week.

The premise?  2 young couples befriend a few other vacationers down in Cancun, Mexico.  When the brother of one of them disappears, the group decides to track him down to a remote, ancient Mayan dig site in the deep, lush jungle.  What they find there and what awaits them is an ancient horror that they would never have dreamed of. Their perilous story is what unfolds with each page that is turned.

What I loved even better was that the conclusion to the novel isn’t your usual, natural conclusion to a story.  Which makes it stand out even better to me as a great novel.  All the while reading the novel, I kept saying to myself that this would make one heck of a great movie.  Only after finishing it up did I go online and find that they did in fact make a movie out of this novel. Seeing the trailer, I already found some major discrepancies with the novel, which make me curious to see the movie and whether the ending was changed into a more standard ending.  I now find myself at that crossroads of whether the movie will ruin the overall memorable experience I had with this book.

Creepy, rich, and something that will keep you up at night, The Ruins is a tour-de-force of great reading.  I have become a Scott Smith fan and will now have to hunt down a copy of his first novel, The Simple Plan.  My only concern at all is whether he will continue to write fiction.  He has proven that he has a natural talent and an imagination that would give Stephen King and Dean Koontz a run for their money.

A must read!