'For the scouts of Troop 52, three days of camping, hiking and survival lessons on Falstaff Island is as close as they'll get to a proper holiday. But when an emaciated figure stumbles into their camp asking for food, the trip takes a horrifying turn. The man is not just hungry, he's sick. Sick in a way they have never seen before.
'Cut off from the mainland, the troop face a terror far worse than anything they could have made up around a campfire. To survive they will have to fight their fears, the elements ... and eventually each other.'
The Troop by Nick Cutter follows a group of teenage scouts that have travelled out to the remote Falstaff Island in northern Canada. The five teens and their scoutmaster are expecting a weekend of trekking and exploring when their outing is interrupted by a mysterious man with an insatiable hunger.
The initial setup for the story sounded pretty creepy when I came across it, and the back of the book was filled with quotes about how scary it was. Whilst I do enjoy a good bit of horror every now and then I often find that horror books can be pretty hit or miss, so while having good hopes for The Troop was wasn't expecting anything spectacular. Boy, was I so wrong.
I read the entire book in about two days, I couldn't put it down. Nick Cutter manages to craft a narrative that completely hooks you and draws you in, despite it being so disturbing that you kind of want to put it away too.
The basic premise of the book is that Tom Padgett, dubbed 'Typhoid Tom' by the media, is carrying a deadly, man-made contagion to the island. This infection is fast acting and devastating to the body, resulting in a horrific death; it's also highly contagious. What is supposed to be a fun weekend away for the scouts turns into a mix of The Thing and Lord of the Flies as mob mentality and paranoia turns people against each other as they try desperately to survive and make their way off the island.
At first I thought that there was no way the narrative could be held as long as it is, the book is close to 400 pages long and Tom has already reached the island and the group by page 20. The beginning moved so fast that I thought the book would struggle to keep me entertained, that it would either lose momentum or the story would end up stretched too thin. However, Cutter crafts a story that has enough twists and turns in it that the pace manages to feel brisk, even spread over a number of days. He also includes a lot of backstory as the narrative unfolds, revealing more about each of the kids during relevant, related points in the story.
The slow revealing of the kids back stories works really well. At first they're all fairly blank slates without much to distinguish them, but as the story progresses we learn a lot about them not just from their actions on the island, but the small glimpses into their past. Each of the children end up being a lot more complex than initially expected, and the small cast of characters definitely helps with this. Keeping the group small means that every boy has a chance to shine, and you come to learn about and care for each of them, well, maybe not one of them.
Cutter also knows that setting the whole narrative on a small island with a group of kids that doesn't know where this contagion came from or what it is wouldn't work as well on its own, so spaced throughout the books are glimpses at the wider story in the form of news articles, interviews, and congressional hearings. These moments not only give the reader a better background to the infection, but some of the additional content is really disturbing for a number of reasons. Cutter admits in the Afterward that this was inspired by Stephen King, and thanks him for the inspiration.
The infection itself is one of the most disturbing parts of the book, not least of all because it seems so very real. Yes, it's something that exists in the real world that has been manipulated and made into something more than it is, so it's not completely realistic, but the fact that it's even loosely based on reality is frightening. It's disturbing in a visceral way, one that makes your skin crawl and the hairs on your neck stand on end. Body horror where it's otherworldly like The Thing or Alien are horrible yes, but one where its something that can work its way into your body for real, though to a less damaging extent than here, is truly horrifying.
Nick Cutter has managed to craft a story that's not just a intense and engaging character led narrative, but a horror that freaks you out and stays with you long after you've finished the book. Don't read this when you're feeling hungry either as I made that mistake and it made the whole experience a lot worse.
I saw a 5 star review for the book on Good Reads that simply said 'Fuck this book', and I would have to agree with that. In a good way. The Troop is a brilliant example of horror, and I'm damn sure I'm going to be recommending this to any horror fans I know.
Buy Amy A Coffee
Go to Amy's Blog
No comments:
Post a Comment