Plot Summary
Have you ever been hungry? Insatiably hungry? So
ravenous that you swear you’re being eaten from the inside out? If not,
consider yourself one of the lucky ones.
Each year, Scoutmaster (and town doctor) Tim
Riggs brings his troop of scouts to the remote island just off the North Point,
Prince Edward Island shore, for a weekend of camping, camaraderie, and utter
solitude. The boys in Tim’s troop are aging out of scouts, but he remains a
loyal scoutmaster for as long as they will stay. Each boy – Kent, Max, Ephraim,
Newton and Shelley – plays some role in the group, and Tim sees each growing
into the men that they will someday become. He is confident in some, and uneasy
about others – and his instincts tell him that he must be careful and alert, as
something dark is lurking.
On the first night of their trip, a sick,
emaciated, confused man appears on the island, by way of a boat. He is hungry –
deathly hungry – and begs Tim for food. Upon bringing the man into the cabin
and examining him, Tim sees just how sickly this man is – and as the man
worsens, Tim tries to save him. His efforts are wasted as the man dies, and the
truth of his sickness is revealed – a bio-engineered, gigantic worm is living
in his stomach, eating all the man's food, and destroying his body, until there
is nothing left of him. What’s worse is that through a simple cough, this man
has infected Tim, and the troop has no idea what to do to help.
Throughout the course of the next 36 hours, Tim
and the boys are terrified to experience just how deadly and destructive this
worm is. Infection is running rampant, as it is carrier, water, and air-borne,
and no one is safe from its reach. The boys witness their humanity dissolving
as, one by one, they realize just what they will do when they are desperate and
at the end of their lives. Some fall prey to the sickness, while some
capitalize on the fear and engage in mental games to terrorize one another. As
time goes on, the boys realize that the help they expected to come has
abandoned them, and they are completely on their own, facing the kind of killer
that they have absolutely no control over.
Through narration, and futuristic documents from
courtroom and clinical trials, this story unfolds as a tale of how easily
things could go incredibly wrong – and how powerless the human race is to stop
it.
Elements of Horror
Foreboding Tone/Pacing
Throughout the entire book, there is an overall
foreboding/uneasy tone, which adds a deep sense of “waiting for the other shoe
to drop”. The characters have very slow moments – walking around the island,
searching for food, sitting by the campfire – which absolutely make the reader
squirm as it is evident that buildup is occurring.
Likewise, the pacing of this story is fairly
common for a horror story. Each character has a great deal of internal thinking
and conflict, which takes up time throughout the story – these quieter moments
are punctuated by sharp, gruesome action scenes that sometimes take the reader
by surprise.
Monsters
Within this story is an incredible tale of a
man-made monster that was generated from a nature-made creature. The engineer
of this disgusting worm was a doctor that understood worms’ abilities to
survive and thrive, and capitalized on those for the development of his
monster. This bio-engineered worm was designed to prey upon its host, thereby
making it one of the most disgusting and terrifying monsters available.
Flawed Protagonists
With the exception of one character (the
survivor), each of the protagonists in this story are flawed and struggling
with their own demons. One of the scouts serves more as an antagonist, though
the argument could be made that the true antagonist is the worm/disease.
Regardless, all of the protagonists have character flaws such as temerity,
brashness, anger issues, penchant for violence, etc.
Graphic Violence
This story has graphic violence as a part of the
storyline, whether characters inflicted it upon one another, or upon
themselves. Scenes in which the author describes the wasted bodies of the
victims are horrific; scenes that describe the violence one character inflicts
on himself as a result of a mental breakdown is absolutely disgusting. Even the
violence that is described as a necessary evil (i.e. when Tim was attempting to
operate on the stranger to save him) is graphic. The author uses phrases that
are both graphic and elegant (i.e. “the skin peeled back gently as he cut”)
that contributes to the overall uneasy tone of the book.
Uncertain Fate
At the conclusion of this story, all but one of
the characters’ fates had been decided by death. However, the survivor’s fate
is very uncertain – he ends up in a quarantine facility for some time, and,
when he returns home, finds his community unable and unwilling to interact with
him. Moreover, he has difficulty battling the his mental and emotional
challenges that came about as a result of this situation, and finds himself
uncertain of where those will lead him.
Book Read-Alikes
Ancestors – Scott Sigler (June
2010)
On a remote island near Canada, doctors and
researchers make a game changing medical discovery when they find a
computer-engineered creature whose organs can be implanted in any subject
without the fear of rejection. However, as time goes on, these doctors find that
the creature is not what it seems, and with it, only death is certain.
Ancestors and The Troop share similar
elements of a remote location providing the breeding ground for an organism
that is highly dangerous to humans. Additionally, both books demonstrate how
situations can quickly spiral out of control when working with human-engineered
living beings.
The Ritual – Aaron Neville (February 2012)
In this suspenseful/horror book, a group of
college friends go hiking together in a remote forest in an effort to rebuild
their relationships, and end up getting lost on the trip. The situation quickly
dissolves as the hikers turn on one another and realize they are being hunted
by a bestial predator.
Similarly to The Troop, The Ritual follows
a group of friends as they navigate wholly unfamiliar terrain and find
themselves doing their best to escape from a predator that they do not fully
understand or know how to defeat.
Roosevelt’s Beast – Louis Bayard
This novel of historical fiction recounts the
trip that Theodore Roosevelt took with his son, Kermit, to the Amazon in 1914.
After battling disease and hunger, the travelers are captured by Amazon
warriors and forced to hunt a dangerous and unknown beast
While The Troop features an internal
beast, both stories feature an unknown opponent that threaten the lives of the
protagonist while they are physically trapped in a location they cannot
escape.
Author Read-Alikes
Stephen King – www.stephenking.com
Both Cutter and King use vivid language, believable scenarios that build into horrific experiences, and well-developed characters. Each author also employs an element of psychological suspense that adds to the general horror of the situation.
Scott Sigler – www.scottsigler.com
Sigler is known for writing books where natural and engineered elements collide, creating wide-spread and panic inducing situations that humans struggle to rectify. His writing is direct, explicit, and designed to scare readers.
Mira Grant - www.miragrant.com
Cutter and Grant write books that involve biological/bio-engineered catastrophes that go horribly wrong while maintaining an initially believable element.
Reader Commentary **SPOILER ALERT**
After reading this book, I am so surprised at how much I
liked reading it! I’m not sure if it was the novelty of the genre (I never read
horror) or what, but I could not put this book down! I initially chose it after
reading the review that Stephen King wrote: “The Troop scared the hell out of me, and I couldn’t put it down. It
is old-school horror at its best.” I figured if I must venture into this world,
I would do it upon recommendation of one of the masters.
Cutter did an excellent job of developing multi-layered, intriguing
characters that the reader cannot help but root for. Although Tim departed the
book early, I thought he was a very thoughtful, well-written character who
maintained his humanity for as long as possible. I was equally intrigued by
Newton and Shelley and Kent who represented a trifecta of different
personalities that were represented, and different ways that the characters
represented fear, anger and acceptance.
I appreciated the way that Cutter wrote this book, with the
interjections of courtroom testimony and transcripts from clinical trials from
the tapeworm. The inclusion of these documents rounded out the story and I
especially appreciated (hated?) reading the description of what happened to the
monkey and guinea pig who were test subjects for this drug.
I was surprised that Max was the character to survive. After
reflecting on the book, I know that it was really a matter of chance, but he
seemed to be the least developed character at the end – but maybe that was
intentional? The end of the book showed him at a quarantine hospital, and later in his hometown, where he cannot or will not interact with people and is haunted by what has happened (understandably). He seems to just be a shell. I do wonder if some of the other characters that had stronger development would have reacted in a different way.
Overall - I am not sure horror is a genre that I will follow closely - but I am excited that I liked this book so much! It's like seeing a scary movie - not something I want to do every time I see a movie, but I certainly enjoy getting scared. I was very pleased with my experiment in this genre.
