
The Troop
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Buy Now for $26.99
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Narrated by:
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Corey Brill
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By:
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Nick Cutter
About this listen
Once every year, Scoutmaster Tim Riggs leads a troop of boys into the Canadian wilderness for a weekend camping trip - a tradition as comforting and reliable as a good ghost story around a roaring bonfre. The boys are a tight-knit crew. There’s Kent, one of the most popular kids in school; Ephraim and Max, also well-liked and easygoing; then there’s Newt the nerd and Shelley the odd duck. For the most part, they all get along and are happy to be there - which makes Scoutmaster Tim’s job a little easier. But for some reason, he can’t shake the feeling that something strange is in the air this year. Something waiting in the darkness. Something wicked...
It comes to them in the night. An unexpected intruder, stumbling upon their campsite like a wild animal. He is shockingly thin, disturbingly pale, and voraciously hungry - a man in unspeakable torment who exposes Tim and the boys to something far more frightening than any ghost story. Within his body is a bioengineered nightmare, a horror that spreads faster than fear. One by one, the boys will do things no person could ever imagine.
And so it begins. An agonizing weekend in the wilderness. A harrowing struggle for survival. No possible escape from the elements, the infected...or one another.
©2013 Nick Cutter (P)2014 Simon & Schuster AudioNick Cutter presents us with a modern-day Lord of the Flies. With a balls-to-the-wall circus of gore and viscera flung at you until the very end. And while it definitely fits well into the its label of horror, it doesn't transcend it; unlike the more heavy hitters in the genre. But Cutter certainly does know horror well. His descriptions of gore and even retelling of simple memories, are twisted into something macabre; inciting squeamish disgust in listeners. At times, Cutter uses too heavy a hand with the memories. The plot scarcely moves forward before one of the boys remember something gross in their childhood and it becomes almost rhythmic, and listeners fall into a pattern. The characters themselves are flawed, though quite one dimensional. The boys all fulfill a stereotype except for Max, whom is so vaguely constructed that he would be utterly forgettable, if Cutter didn't have big plans for him in the plot.
But perhaps this reception of the boys is due to the narration, which is monotone at best. And downright lazy at worst. Corey Brill reads the novel like he's never read it before. Every time he reaches the end of a chapter, usually a time for narrators to construct some sort of distinct tone, he make it an anticlimax. So much so that listeners can almost believe he is mid sentence, before the next chapter starts. So it's no surprise then that his dialogue lands flat. And while his monotone is a compliment to the gore in the novel, it feels more like a scientist droning about his research, than an actual horror novel.
A modern Lord of the Flies
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Slow build, but a great final act
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full on, but good full on
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Savage and gory
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The book is gross in a good way and I found I had to take breaks regularly, especially during horrific sequences that weren’t even necessarily to do with the horror aspect of the story.
Satisfying in a way that kept me wanting more. I love the closed environment that the story was set in (on an island); a bottle piece with a wide neck. Took a wee while to keep track of the characters but ultimately grew to understand them as unique from each other. Just don’t pick favourites…
En(gross)ing
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Fantastic
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I highly recommend listening/ reading to the Troop & am looking forward to reading more from Nick Cutters
One of the best books I’ve read this year
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Great story
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Great! Except…
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Storyline is fantastic, it goes to unexpected places and really did keep me guessing.
The narrator is only slightly annoying, I give him a 7.5 out of 10. sometimes he makes weird sounds like a screach or a moan or a groan as the story requires but it gets a bit over the top.
it's very descriptive and at times I zoned out because I don't love over explaning (there was an entire chapter on killing a turtle). however that might be your bag so all good.
Good level of gore and definitely made me not want to eat at times because of the ewww factor.
Worth a listen! Do it!
Unexpected storyline, refreshingly good
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