The Ruins (novel)

The Ruins is a book released on July 18th, 2006 by Scott Smith. It is of the horror genre. It is set in and around Mayan ruins of Mexico. It is the second book offered by the author. Its ISBN number is: 1400043875.

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Jeff is the leader of the group, the only one with the guts to make decisions. His girlfriend is Amy. He is also friends with Eric and Stacy. He met Mathias in Cancun. Jeff decides to accompany Mathias to the ruins. Jeff convinces Amy, who convinces Stacy, who convinces Eric to go.

Amy is Jeff's girlfriend. She is a party pooper, which she is well aware of. She does not want to make the trip to The Ruins, but decides against it after becoming aware of the fact that she ruins everyone else's good time by her constant complaints. Loves to take pictures.

Stacy is Amy's friend. She is very sexually active, and has already made out with a Greek named "Don-Quioxte" on the trip. She is sort of in a relationship with Eric, or trying to be. She feels helpless.

Eric is Stacy's friend. He's a drunkard, and does what he wants most of the time. Sometimes Jeff is able to sway him. He will become a english teacher after the Cancun trip.

Mathias is the group's travel guide. His brother has gone missing after a dispute, and has left behind a map to where he went with his girlfriend.

Juan, Pablo, Don Quioxte are the three Greeks who meet the original group (Jeff Stacy Amy and Eric) in Cancun and get drunk with them. They are known to swap names between one another and drink alot of tequilla. None can speak a language other than Greek. Pablo accompanies the group along with Mathias to the ruins. The other two are symbols of hope later on the novel.

Heinrich is Mathias's brother. He is the reason they are going to the ruins.

Plot

The novel follows a group of tourists on vacation in Cancun who find a deadly patch of jungle while looking for some ruins. Four Americans (Jeff, Eric, Stacey, and Amy), along with their German friend Mathias and another Greek traveller known as Pablo, go looking for Mathias' brother, who has went to the ruins by the Mayan village along with his girlfriend, leaving behind a map that leads to an archelogical dig. Following the trail, the motley group find a Mayan village. Amy finds a path that is hidden, and the group follows it. While taking this path, they are followed by two Mayan boys on a bike. Once they reach a certain point on the path, one boy retreats to the village and returns with a Mayan on horseback with a pistol, who wants them to go no further. Amy, wanting to take a picture of the ordeal, backs up to get a better shot and finds her ankle entangled by a vine. Once this happens, the Mayan inexplicably forces them all up the hill. They walk up the trail to the top of the hill, when Jeff decides they'll just exit on the other side, only to find the villagers have surrounded the hillside and threaten to shoot them should they decide to turn back. Before doing so, Mathias investigates a flower mound, and after digging it up, finds his brother is buried there with some of his flesh eaten, and finds that the sap has burned his hands. Faced with no other option, they head back up onto the hill. They find a mineshaft with a rope nearby and hear what sounds like a cell phone. Pablo the greek ties the rope around himself and is lowered with a lamp in hand. Once he is at around twenty five feet in, Mathias discovers the plant is leaking sap onto the rope, and the rope is about to break. The rope does snap and Pablo falls to the floor of the mine shaft. After they repair the rope, to the music of Pablo's constant screaming, Eric is lowered down, with a lamp as well, to rescue the Greek. He finds the rope does not reach the bottom, and when Jeff tells him to come back up, where they will make the rope longer, Eric instead jumps, and he lands on his knees on the Greek's shattered lamp, leaving a chunk of glass in his right knee. Eric finds that Pablo's back is broken, so Jeff and Mathias tie two poles together to put the greek on, so they can bring him up. Amy goes down with it. After she reaches the bottom, the poles are 3 feet off the ground, so Eric and Amy must lift Pablo onto it. Amy has trouble lifting him onto it, but they do succeed in putting him on. He is lifted up, then Amy, then Eric. They do not find the cell phone while down there. We see some insight of the characters. Amy and Stacy are weak, Eric is independant, Mathias seems like he'd be an excellent leader but doesn't voice his opinions enough, and Jeff leads the group while constantly asking Mathias for advice. After the mine incident, everyone is tired. Jeff rations out food and drink, then they go to sleep with no sign of the archiologists other than two tents, which is now their shelter. Jeff sees a break in the fires from the Mayans, and decides he will try to slip by them. On the way down the hill, several birds alert the Mayans to his presence, then on his way back up the hill after he is confronted by the Mayans, the birds are silent. Eric gets a handjob from Stacy, and when he wakes up, discovers a vine has wrapped itself around his right leg all the way up to his pelvis, which Stacy finds out was attracted by the liquid. To Eric's horror, he discovers the vine has went up into his wound and is inside his leg. The Greek is wrapped from the waist down in the vine, and while Jeff is getting the vine off the Greek, Mathias is helping Eric. The Greek's entire body from the waist down has been eaten away at by the plant's acidic sap, but Eric seems to have no damage done to him. Later, Amy vomits and the vine moves like a snake, drinks the vomit up, then returns to where it was. They discover that it can move. Jeff decides he will amputate Pablo's legs, which Eric doesn't care about, Stacy doesn't want to happen but is too weak to voice her opinion, and Mathias goes with whatever Jeff wants to do. Amy is not informed and comes to stop Jeff after the legs have already been amputated. After Amy voices her displeasure over the amputation, Jeff decides they will go back down the mineshaft to retrieve the cell phone. He and Amy are lowered down. Amy rushes ahead of Jeff who pleads with her to stop as he discovers the vine is making the cell phone ring noise, and reveals the vine is covering up another mine shaft, one step in front of Amy, who would've plummeted to her death. After Jeff saves her, they go to leave and the vine begins laughing at them. Eric is constantly complaining that the vine is still inside him, which Jeff dismisses, telling him to shut up. Eric has an obsession with the knife, always wanting it to cut himself to search for the vine inside of him, which he does when he cuts himself across the stomach exepcting the vine to fall out. The reader is not sure whether or not it is actually inside him, until he wakes up with the vine coming out of his knee and stomach. Jeff is still unconvinced that it has grown out of him, but thinks it has grown into him. Amy and Stacy are convinced that the greeks, Don Quioxte and Pablo, will come rescue them, and become angry when Jeff tries to prepare for the future events. They don't expect to remain here for more than one or two days. Mathias acts as Jeff's right hand man. He seems like he'd be better suited to lead the group, but we find out later that this is not so. Amy, Stacy, and Eric all get drunk off a bottle of tequila and discuss how the event will be made into a movie and what roles they will play. Eric decides Stacy will be the slut, he will be the comedian(Adam Sandler), Amy will be the hot chick that sings, Jeff will be the hero (Bruce Willis), and Mathias will turn out to be the villan because he's a German and the vine is a secret Nazi weapon. Stacy and Amy get into a fight when Stacy pees on her foot and wastes water washing it off. They take turns calling each other a slut or a bitch, then when they stop talking altogether, their voices continue talking, as does Eric's. The vine begins echoing their conversation, which is when we discover it can mimic them. Jeff is angered that the three were talking about him, and comes to the realization that he is always apologizing to Amy, so he demands that she apologize to him, and then doesn't approve of her apology. Later in the rain, he sees Amy struggling to walk to him and collasping, and ignores her, thinking she wants his sympothy. Mathias finds out the vine has grown across her mouth and nose and down her throat. Jeff introduces the idea of eating Amy, but nobody agrees with it. Pablo is killed when Mathias leaves to find where Jeff is, and Stacy is distracted by the vine mimicing her and Mathias's voice making it sound like the two engaged in sex, while she is trying to explain to Eric it never happened and the vine smothers Pablo. Mathias does not find Jeff. Jeff is killed by the Mayans, when he finds the fires are all out and tries to make a break for it. After being shot twice by arrows, the vine devours him. The vine tells Mathias, Eric, and Stacy: Where is Jeff? Jeff is here. Jeff is dead. in German which Mathias translates to them. With Jeff gone, Mathias takes over as the leader, and his flaws are immediately recognized as he allows Stacy to down a bottle of tequilla, which Jeff wouldn't have let happen, and leaves Eric alone with the knife, when he and Stacy leave to find proof of Jeff's death. They find him as a flower mound, just as Heinrich was found earlier. When they return for Eric, he has cut himself all over his body and when Heinrich rushes to stop him, Eric stabs him by accident, meaning only to deflect the German so he can continue removing the vine from his body. The vine takes Mathias, but leaves Eric who begs Stacy to kill him. He puts the knife on his body and tells her to push, which she does. She later goes to the edge of the hill and kills herself with the knife. After the party is dead, the two greeks arrive four days later with three brazillians looking for Pablo, only to receive the same fate: trapped on the hill by the Mayans.

Criticism

I believe it to be a true attrocity that it never occured to Scott Smith as either an author or a man, that Stacy should survive.