The Troop
Ratings224
Average rating3.6
What a fast paced horror book. It really checked all the boxes for me. It reminded me a bit of early Stephen king. I think Nick Cutter does a great job of describing disturbing scenes and getting into the heads of each character. I do feel like we don't get a lot of time to develop some characters but it was easily bingeable and had me turning each page to find out what was gonna happen next
God this book was great. I haven't had nightmares from reading a book in ages. This book literally had me waking up gasping. I'm glad to be done. I'm a good way.
This book is disgusting, unnerving, and upsetting. I loved every second of it.
The story of The Troop is not for the squeamish. It hearkens back to several story themes rolled into one ghastly tale. One theme that is very pertinent to today's headlines is the escape from a biolab of a very transmissible and deadly organism and the horrific outcome for those who become infected. Could sociopathic scientists and the military possibly be involved, wink, wink? Another storyline hearkens back to the creepy “Bad Seed” theme and then elements of the story also remind the reader of the book The Lord of the Flies. But of all the horrible things that occur in the book, what bothered me the most was the sea turtle incident. Those who dare to read this stomach turning story will understand what I mean by that off-hand reference.
Rating: 4.74 leaves out of 5Characters: 4/5 Cover: 5/5Story: 4.95/5Writing: 5/5Genre: Horror/Thriller/ScifiType: AudiobookWorth?: Yes!Hated Disliked It Was Okay Liked Really Liked Loved FavoritedIf you liked the book Lord of the Flies and the movie Slither then I believe this book is for you! This book will make you cringe and squirm and break your heart in pieces. I love the imagery Cutter gave us about these things and how he didn't backdown on his bad guys. It was very much a worthy read!
This book made me lose my appetite, but holy moly that was a quite the book.
If you can stomach body horror and bug stuff, I think you'll find this to be a 5 star read.
But I'd recommend this over LORD OF THE FLIES any day of the week.
I'm honestly not sure why I kept reading after the cat scene, the point where I went from generally bored to disgusted, maybe it was the writing for the first few pages that I really liked or maybe it was just the desire to not DNF 2 books in the same week?
There are actual horror aspects to this book and the prose is nice but that's about all the redeeming value I can find here in the face of the unnecessary amount of just gross. I'm not a generally squeamish person but it all felt very gratuitous here. I think the sexual aspects of the book were just the worst, realistically speaking I know young teens experience arousal and whatnot but there's something particularly uncomfortable about the way it is approached here. The best way I can describe it is this book felt like horror in the same way as A Serbian Film did but in a way it did feel more gratuitous than A Serbian Film did and part of me hopes that the gratuitous nature of it all was somehow the point and the true horror of the story.
Really scary, well written and so. Only 4.5 stars because I feel there was a bit too much of additional story with the psychopath boy in addition to the main plot which was, IMO, self sufficient.
Well that was perfectly horrifying and disgusting and absolutely the kind of read I was in the mood for. This was like Lord of the Flies, mixed with The Body (Stand by Be for the movie buffs) with a smidge of The Dreamcatcher. Whew
Distressing but well-written.
This novel was graphically detailed and very distressing. Very good for a horror fan! Trigger warning, very graphic human and animal violence.
What a great way to start the winter ; with a horror novel that is so disturbingly gory that reading it might make you physically recoil (quite literally).
Five children goes to a 3 day camping trip in an isolated island. The first night they encounter a mysterious man on a boat, coming from the sea and things go drastically and horribly wrong after that.
This is an example of old school horror done right. This book, being bleak, terrifying and utterly disturbing gets an easy recommendation from me.
One of the best horror books I've ever read. Very fast paced, constantly keeping you on edge, very disgusting, and the character development was great! Summary of this story would be that a group of Boy Scouts go to the lake in Canada with their leader Tom, they then come in contact with a stranger who is...very hungry to say the least. He is very skinny, his skin is decaying, and something keeps moving under his skin. Is it a figment of their imagination or is it something to worry about? These scouts are sure to find out and they won't like the answer!
I couldn't finish this. The book was well-written, with a believable, scary plot and interesting characters. Ultimately, maybe Mr. Cutter was just too descriptive for me? It's not a problem I've encountered in my limited apocalypse/terror/horror reads, but I reached a point where I just couldn't go any further, even not knowing how it ends–something that typically drives me crazy. Trying not to spoil it, but one character is NOT okay. Shelly is a fvcking sociopath, and the author does a *really* good job--too good maybe--describing Shelly's past torture of animals *BEFORE* Shelly moves on other things in the present. How convenient for Shelly that there's an apocalypse and he can do whatever he wants? Yikes.
I might pick it up later and finish it, but this is just not for me. Gonna go find me a HEA.
Audiobook narrator was great.
Note to self–listened to 6:37:34 of 11:02:10 (60%) with 4:24:36 left.
Probably more like a 3? 3.5? The first half was super solid. The interstitials were perfect. The prose was top tier and what really drove me to the end. The part with the turtle is the best (worst?) part of the book. Loved it.
Very very VERY predictable though. After the initial shock wears off and the meat of the story gets going in full force it all plays out exactly how you would imagine.
Easy read though, drags near the end, especially after you realize that yes, it is just going through the motions now and is done doing anything novel.
Terrific prose. As a story-teller you can definitely find better, but on the level of pure word-craft? Maybe one of the best in the field.
4.5 stars What's the scariest book you've ever read? I just finished The Troop by Nick Cutter and had to read it exclusively during the day
This made me stop biting my nails...
The vivid detail of the horrors that occurred to the troop will haunt me. Loved the characters, even Shel..kind of.
It was fun but a little boring at times and I didn't really care about the worms.
I flew through this book and wanted to know what was going to happen to the boys next. The writing is pretty graphic, so if reading about wounds and blood and the like is going to make you put this book down, don't pick it up. I usually can't handle reading about these things, but because the book moves so quickly, the author doesn't linger on these scenes for too long and I was fine. The horror is definitely something you could see happening in real life which makes it that much more horrifying.
My issues were that the characters were all stereotypes. The troop leader is a single, adult man who lives alone with rumors in town that he might be gay. There is the fat, nerdy kid who you root for. There is the dumb jock whose dad is the chief of police and you want to grow out of this bullying phase. We have the angry kid whose dad is in jail. We have the normal kid with no stand-out characteristics. And very early on, we are clued into the fact that one of the boys is a socio/psychopath who likes to torture animals and is definitely going to be a problem as the boys try to survive the horror of the island.
Putting all these flat characters together just left me wanting to know how those that didn't survive the island died. I didn't really care who survived and who died, just how they did it. That was the most interesting part. I also felt like they didn't speak like 13 and 14-year old boys actually speak which didn't help my connection to the characters.
I still think this is a good book to read if you like “gross”, realistic horror, but I wish the characters had been fully developed.
