A survival body horror about six people stuck on a Mayan ruin with deadly sentient vines and a gruesome outcome.

• Depressing factor: ★★★★★
• Body horror factor: ★★★★★
• Botanical horror factor: ★★★★★
• Original factor: ★★★★★
• Psychological horror: ★★★★★

The Ruins is a botanical body horror that is mixed with psychological horror and survival. It’s a depressing read with realistic characters and behavior, a supernatural vine and a hopeless situation. It’s gruesome, gory, disgusting, tragic and intriguing. A horror you can’t look away from.  

It consists of 336 pages. 

Plot

Stacey and Amy are in their early twenties and best friends. Together with their respective boyfriends Eric and Jeff they go to Cancun Mexico on vacation. There they meet Matthias a German and three Greeks who call themselves Pablo, Don Quixote and Juan. 

Matthias came with his brother Henrich who met a girl in Cancun who was on an archeological dig. So he went with her after a fight with Matthias. Although he left a handmade map where he was going he never came back. When they have to go back to Germany soon, Matthias wants to find him. Jeff offers that they all go with him, although Amy doesn’t want to go. Pablo also accompanies them and leaves a note for his friends who went fishing so they can come after them. 

They take the bus to the jungle. After a short walk through the jungle they arrive in a Mayan village. The villagers act very strange and when the six of them want to go back they accidentally find the trail that leads to a Mayan ruin. Soon a man of the village has caught up with them and he has a gun. He gestures them to go away, but Amy wants to take a photo of them, stepping closer to the ruin. When she almost brushes against the vines that grow on the ruin, the man gets upset and angry and fires his gun hoarding them all towards the ruin. 

Other villagers have arrived with weapons and they are forced up the ruin. There they find two tents, and backpacks that belonged to other people, but the people are nowhere to be found. Soon they find out why and come to a horrifying discovery. The vines are deadly and dangerous and their survival is only just beginning.

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Short Review

First of all this is a very depressing book, a story of a hopeless situation. From the moment they set foot near the ruin they are condemned. What follows is a story of their slow demise that is not pleasant to read. If you are squeamish, or don’t like books without a happy end, then you should skip it.

That said it’s a very well written story about six people, who enjoy their vacation that takes a turn for the worse. Suddenly they are in a deadly situation, there’s hope but it’s faint. Why this book is so depressing is because it’s very realistic. The way they handle the situation is realistic too, although everyone gets a role, funny enough just like Eric later in the book says when they speculate about a film that will be made of their dire situation once they get out of there.

Jeff is the boy scout, he wants to keep surviving and that means thinking in solutions, being prepared and trying to do what’s best. Amy is the complainer. She didn’t want to go, but ironically she’s the one who got them stuck on the ruin. Stacey is emotional and Eric gets himself injured and results in him being paranoid. Matthias is level-headed and Pablo is a Greek who can’t speak English and functions as a very morbid device for the story. While they try to survive, it’s not easy. They don’t exactly fight, but tensions are rising as hope is slowly fading. 

The most important character is the Vines. It’s hungry, it’s manipulative, a trickster  and can mimic sounds. The idea is terrifying and there’s nothing they can do about it but to endure. They have to deal with the Vines, their injuries, the weather, the heat, little food and water, each other, all while the Mayans are watching them preventing them to leave the ruin. It’s never fully explained where the Vines came from and why they are sentient and how it can do all these things. But it’s not about the why and how but it’s about what horrors it causes. 

The book is full of body horror. Not only the injuries from a fall, or a cut are gruesome and gory but what the Vines are doing to them is far more gross. The descriptions are vivid and graphic and disgusting. Like they say in the book that the friends “are seeing but not seeing” so can you just not look away. 

The tone of the book veers from hope to hopelessness although you know how it is going to end. And the ending is also very ironic. But it’s not about the end, it’s about their slow demise that is excruciating and horrible, yet fascinating. Although the characters aren’t stereotypes, there aren’t fleshed-out either. We follow the story through their eyes, told from the perspectives of Amy, Stacey, Eric and Jeff, their experiences cleverly intertwined showing some happenings from different point of views, completing the story. It’s their tragic tale, of guilt, shame, paranoia, trying to help and all the emotions that are normal in such a situation. 

The Ruins is a story you don’t read for pleasure. Still it’s a very well written story, realistic and full of body horror, psychological horror and a very original deadly vine.