The Troop

There were some good graphic descriptions of horror in the book. Otherwise, I didn't care much for it or the language, which I'm sure would be more appealing to teenagers. There is also a small part about torturing an animal and I see no need in fiction to write details about that at all. I just didn't care much for the book, even though the story line had such promise. Had the characters been more average or and kind and innocent, I think it might have appealed to me.

The book was okay. I read it because Stephen King endorsed it, but it was gory. If you like reading about something sick and disgusting then it is the book for you. I didn't like it, but I read it because I bought it.

This the downright scariest book I have ever read in my life, which includes thousands of books. The story takes place 2 miles below the Mariana Trench, which is 6 miles under the Pacific Ocean. Scientists have placed a large station there, with many laboratories and tunnels for sleeping, working, storerooms, etc. They are seeking a strange substance which seems to have miraculous properties, but which in the end is seeking them and slowly driving them mad.

I am a huge fan of horror in any format. I've read thousands of titles seen thousands of movies. This is NOT horror! This is just some writing to try and gross someone out. No suspense and the writing style is worse than the story itself.i will never understand why stephen king endorsed this garbage! Ive never written a review before now. I just hope someone reads this before throwing hard earned money away on one of the worst written novels I have ever read!!!!

I bought this book because of Stephen King's recommendation. I do not understand why he recommended it. After reading 50 pages, I deleted it from my Kindle. I enjoy horror and suspense. I do not consider myself squeamish but this book is in a whole new category of vileness. I'd just finished reading The Bear and thought this book might be similar - kids trying to survive on their own in the wilderness. But the descriptions of events and actions are gross, not scary, there is no suspense, just gore. A waste of time and not worth reading. Read The Bear instead.

Nick Cutter's grotesque , graphic description of injuries and death in this book are stomach turning but the plot is so thin you could read a book through it at twilight. He uses press releases and legal transcripts as device to fill the story out between chapters and telegraphs the ending about a third of the way through. There characters were flat and I couldn't find anyone to root for in the story. This was an interesting premise, survivor meets Lord of the Flies, that went nowhere. Very disappointing

If you`re looking for hard core horror with a very entertaining tale of biological warfare gone amok on an isolated island visited by a troop of boy scouts and their scout leader, this is the book to read.

The concept of children abandoned or trapped on an island and challenged to survive in the wilderness and to survive each other has been done many times before and better than in The Troop which suffers from poor writing and derivative storyline from Nick Cutter.
The plot is about a mutated tapeworm which eats its victim from within and also alters their personality. One by one they fall victim to it as the military keeps them quarentined on the island hoping to prevent the spread of the worm to populated areas.
This is not suspenseful so much as a gross description of the tapeworm overtaking its victims and morphing them into hideous, crazed creatures bent on murder to feed their insatiable hunger.
The worst type of pulp fiction.

This story had such potential, but I felt the animal torture and death upstaged the story...and not in a good way. I simply do not want to read about animal abuse in my stories--EVER. What could have been a 3 or even 4 star book for me (the story is creative and engaging), decreased to a 1.5 or 2 star review. I understand why the author made the choices he did at one point...we're looking into the mind of a psychopath and it's not always pretty. But why, oh why, did he have to keep it up? Totally ruined the book for me.

The last book I read by this author, The Deep, also had an incredibly heartbreaking scene with a dog. I do believe this will be my final Nick Cutter book.

As a part-time online book reviewer and fulltime editor, I am constantly on the search for talented new faces in the literature world. After hearing about two up-and-coming novels, I am Murphy's Law by C. E. Scott and "The Troop" by Nick Cutter, I decided to check them out, and I instantly understood what all the buzz was about.

"The Troop" is classic pulp and gore horror at its very finest. Take an isolated island, five incoherent boy scouts and their somewhat inapt leader, a stranger who suddenly appears out of nowhere with a deadly parasite consuming his body, and you have yourself an unmerciful tale that takes hold of your fear and doesn't let go

"The Troop" doesn't read like a book from a new author at all. It was more like a novel written by a seasoned veteran in the field, and I was taken back to the first time I read Carrie as I raced through its pages. I swear, if one of the boys possessed psychic abilities, I would have bet my salary that it was written by Stephen King under a pseudonym. But nope, no Richard Bachman here.

The bioengineered tapeworm in this novel is the perfect killing machine. It not only wastes away a person in a matter of hours, but it also alters their thinking process, making the person make rash and tactless decisions (which leads the characters into a horrible downward spiral). It also spreads like no other contagion, through blood, saliva, other bodily fluids, and coughing, and if I was on the island, I would not touch anything that had even been near one of the contaminated. I would have taken my chances and swam through the icy waters surrounding the island, just to be as far away from it as I could.

What makes the situation even worse is that after the boys' leadership is all but gone, it is up to the younger counterparts to govern themselves while fighting against the contagion at the same time (this is where the" Lord of the Flies" reference comes into play). At first, you view these boys as the typical stereotypes, the nerd, the bully, the outcast, etc., but some seriously dark psychological issues that weren't known to each other emerge, and the hierarchy completely unravels. What were once the weak become the powerful, and it sets forth some really epic battles within their crew. It is amazing what these adolescents can actually do to each other, and it is particularly frightening to what acts one of the boys is capable of. (I won't give any spoilers. You'll find out for yourself.)

All in all, it was an excellent book, and if you are a fan of horror, you will love it. I enjoyed the way he used official documents and other written articles to change the story's pace and give insight to where the parasite originated and what was happening around the island during the characters' peril. I do have a few qualms, but they are hardly negative by any means. Cutter's writing style is immaculate. He has a very keen sense for description, whether when dealing with emotions, the scenery, or the gore, itself, and his prose is majestic in a way, like what you find in British literature. There were times when I would get lost in his prose and have to reread sections because I lost cognition of what was happening. The middle section of the book was somewhat slow, and there was possibly too much backstory. Some people might gripe about this, but I enjoy seeing what makes a character tick. I also viewed some of the character's decision making as unrealistic, but who can say what people will do under such stressful and horrific situations.

Be warned, this novel is very graphic in nature, and Cutter describes the horror in ways that make it seem so real. "The Troop" is not for the faint of heart. It is very gory, and like other reviewers have written, there are instances of animal abuse. But it's fiction, people. It didn't really happen, and if you don't like reading about it, don't read it and then give it a bad review. This is a horror novel, after all. It's meant to be disgusting and bring out your emotions, and with that being said, if that's what you're looking for, you've come to the right place.

I normally don't write reviews outside of my website, but I couldn't resist after reading these novels. I have placed Doctor Sleep: A Novel, The Troop, and I am Murphy's Law as the top horror reads for 2014. If you're looking for a great read from either one of the big boys on the block or one of the new kids on the block, you can't go wrong with any of the three.

How can anyone enjoy a book that offers a graphic description of a kitten being tortured to death? Nothing could be much sicker. On top of that, this book is extremely formulaic and a big waste of time. I

This is the first time in a very long time that I have been unable to read another page. I read many other reviews, some positive and some who put the book down. I thought those writing negative reviews were probably just squeamish or overstating their opinion as to the effects of what was happening, but halfway through, the description of animal cruelty became too much for me. I can see why this author didn’t want to write under his real name. I didn’t find the book to be horror, just horrible and horrific. I’m not wasting any more time on Mr. Cutter (how apt a name). I had ordered the Deep, but will be canceling that order, and won’t be reading anything else by him or under his real name. I get the underlying message about science and the government, but there are much better ways to tell the story.

I was immediately intrigued by the description of this book and was looking forward to a good read. On that note, some parts were good, some not so much.

What I liked: The setting was perfect - boy scouts on a secluded island, a stranger shows up, chaos ensues, and they have no one to rely on but themselves. But can they trust each other? The bioengineered horror (I don't want to give anything away) was a new approach and added a scientific element to the plot. I also enjoyed the rotation between what was currently happening and the court transcripts and reports during the aftermath of the island occurrences and the varying POV's between the boys and the scoutmaster. The backstory on each boy was also helpful in explaining their personalities.

What I didn't like: This book isn't for the faint of heart. Give me gore, blood, guts, murders, etc. of people in any story - not an issue. But when it involves animals, it can be a problem for me. There were a few incidents of graphic animal abuse in this story and I just had to skim through those parts. The boys seemed pretty stereotypical - the jock, the nerd, the psychologically disturbed one, etc. The scoutmaster, Tim, supposedly a responsible, upstanding doctor in a small community who had worked with these boys for years, made some incredibly bad choices that seemed a little unbelievable for his character.

I've been a horror fan since the 3rd grade and if you're into horror books and have no problem with animal abuse, this novel is enjoyable. Although the majority of characters in this book are 14, this is most definitely an adult book, so I don't recommend this for younger readers.

This review is based on a digital copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Plot: 3/5. I feel like Nick had some pacing issues in this story. Some parts drag on and some are over too quickly, and he zooms in with laser focus on points or moments that seem strange to me. I wish he had focused a little less on backstory and a little more on elements only relatable to the story, but otherwise I enjoyed it. He had a good balance of easily foreseeable twists and ones that blindside the reader to keep us engaged.

Characters: 4/5. Characters are really Nick Cutter’s strong suite. The five boys and two men who populate the desert island on which the story takes place are all rich, full characters who lead rich inner lives. I will own up to crying when a particular boy for whom I had developed a lot of empathy died. There is no dog death in this story!! Unfortunately, his attempt to create these rich multi-dimensional characters sometimes to the point of distracting us from the story and makes it too long.

Style: 5/5. Nick Cutter’s style is highly sensual and descriptive, often to the point of being shudder-inducing or sickening in moments of body horror. He obviously does his research, and the gut-wrenching realism of these elements pair nicely with the more fantastical aspects. It is always a roller coaster of highs and lows with Nick, and the tense moments are held at violin-string intensity until the reader practically snaps. I enjoy reading his work immensely.

Originality: 3/5. A man-eating parasite isn’t a super interesting antagonist in my opinion, but that definitely has to do with personal taste. Malicious kid turned serial killer is also a fairly well-worn trope, but the two together create a more or less original storyline with interesting twists and turns.

Overall: 3.75/5. Overall a solid man vs. man conflict catalyzed by a horrifying experiment gone wrong (or right?) on an isolated island. I’d definitely recommend this book, but only if you have a strong stomach!

For more reviews, check out bergenreadsbooks.wordpress.com

This book really needed a better editor than it had. There were redundant sentences and parts that probably made sense in the author's head but just seemed silly on paper. The Stephen King quote on the jacket said this was "old school horror," and it is, in the sense that the characters act illogically such that they are put into greater peril. I thought by now we had gotten savvier. Horror needs to have some characters you could relate to, acting in ways you can relate to. Otherwise it won't be scary; you'll just shout at the TV or put down the book.

There are a lot of ways to take the setup --a boy scout camping trip on an isolated island-- and make it better. But these boys aren't people who you'll care about. One of them is an outright psychopath who tortures animals (boo!). Another is a self important bully. Another has anger issues. The shock of Lord of the Flies and Battle Royale was witnessing otherwise decent kids sink into the depravity of human survival. These scouts barely needed a small push. When they do dumb things that maximize their risk, you'll probably think "meh." At no time did I root for any of this small, vulnerable group of kids. Rather, I hoped they stayed isolated to avoid spreading the contagion they were so quick to run toward in the first place.

The book has a lot of interspersed journal entries and newspaper articles. I'm tiring of that trend. I think the journal entries worked great in Sleeping Giants, but here it just felt like the author was picking up on a gimmick past its prime, like horror movies being shot with shaky home video cameras.

And speaking of tired trends....worms? There was a Supernatural, an X-Files, The Strain, an old MST3k, Tremors, etc., etc., etc. Let's face it, worms can be gross but not scary.

A powerful , visceral audiobook with a plot that doesnt hold up to scrutiny but and some very tough to listen to passages , The chimps ordeal was really something and I gotta say , the turtles end was grievous to listen to as well , what the boys did after it was killed makes me think its something I would have done. There are monsters in this book but its not those genetically modified yet mindless millions, its the humans , That Admiral...... that wretched creature is something else.
This story is amazingly effective at developing pathos and the story plays out pretty smoothly except for a couple parts. The 'surgery' wasnt necessary to the plot except as a MacGuffin and the final fate of Ephraim didnt sound authentic , you dont go down that type of hole just because youre dull witted but otherwise reasonably sound. But those two beefs aside this is a grisly , tense story that itself has quite a ring of horrifying plausibility to it.
Considering Max's final fate it may be honestly said that there were no survivors of the horror that befell them and almost befell the world.
and paitient zero imo didnt deserve the insulting epithets laid to his name as there was a reason he fled to a small island that he thought was uninhabited , he tried to contain the uncleanness in him before it killed him , which is why he made a meal out those two components of his boats motor.
This novel is gross and may induce queasiness or at the least may spoil your apatite but it is gripping and tragic and frightening and will leave you with a feeling of unease. My copy is an audiobook purchased through the store and its narrated very effectively.

September 5, 2013 – Finished Reading

The ultimate battle for survival not only for the boy scouts alone on the island, but also for the "worms" that adapt and continue to thrive. Whose will to survive is strongest??

This book was creepy, gory, and so horrifically descriptive I will have nightmares about it for a while. I do not see how the boy scouts in this story did not freak out to a larger extent. Their actions were very believable because they were still young and their willingness to accept the strangeness helped them deal with the issues better than many adults who would have likely just went into shock.

The ole government conspiracy rears it's ugly head again, and of course it once again appears to be exactly what happened. Innocent kids (14 year olds) given no assistance and sacrificed to see how well the "worm" would work as a weapon of war. The layout of the story allows the reader to know what happened on the main land in places between the horrifying events on the island.

This book was awesome & suspenseful I could not wait to see who, if anyone survived. I kept cheering for some Boy Scout lesson to save the day. Each scout is well developed and you feel as if you have a good grasp on the boy's personality and possibly what he might do next. I read the book in a matter of days because I was cheering for this boy & then that one. I could not wait to see what happened next & would catch myself holding my breath & thinking "no, no, no".

I love Boy Scouts / Cub Scots & honestly I am certain I will think of this book on every camp out I attend from now on. I couldn't help laughing a little when the boys begin to wonder about their leader's sanity etc. Every scout leader's nightmare... LOL.

I received a complementary copy to provide an honest review.

We all have our own ways of dealing with anxiety and depression. One of mine for the former is to kick back with an audiobook and lose myself in World of Warcraft. This week, my audiobook of choice was Nick Cutter’s The Troop. I first discovered Cutter last year after receiving an arc of Little Heaven, which I enjoyed immensely. Naturally, I was not let down with this title.

It’s a fairly short listen, coming in at just over eleven hours. Narrated by Corey Brill, the book tells the story of a bunch of kids and their mentor after a strange encounter with an emaciated man. From there, things spiral downward in a rather interesting turn of events and readers watch the usual trope that comes into play when the threat of apocalypse hangs over a town – or in this case, island. The fact that the cast is mostly teenage boys? That’s of no consequence.

The Troop is what I call a “last man standing” story. I suppose that’s comparable to “final girls” when you think about it. These kids, because that’s all they are, find themselves facing a horror they cannot truly comprehend, and with the military working in favor of the greater good, are on their own. Naturally, that means we’ve got some deep psychological stuff that’s going to go on, as well as several scenes of last minute survival habits – such as harming animals. And, of course, there’s madness tinting this books periphery.

I really enjoyed this approach to a horror story born of what originally begins as a good deed (though clearly is not toward its end). The characters had their own flaws and represented the different types of kids we’re likely to find in a high school class – only, of course, without the presence of any females.

Once again, Cutter has impressed me with his ability to make me cringe, among other things. I definitely look forward to getting my hands on more of his work in the future. Also, the audiobook is worth it. Corey Brill has a gorgeous voice.

This is the second tapeworm novel I've read in the last few months. As trends go, I doubt that tapeworms are likely to replace zombies, but they are sufficiently creepy and disgusting to lend themselves to thriller/horror novels. The Troop gives the tapeworm theme an interesting spin. The story involves a bunch of boys stranded on an island. It's sort of like Lord of the Flies ... with tapeworms.

Scoutmaster Tim Riggs had taken his troop of 14-year-olds to Falstaff Island for a camping trip. They believe they are the only humans on the island until Tim encounters Tom Padgett: a seriously thin man who is driven to eat, constantly and insatiably. And he'll eat anything. Tim, a doctor, is disturbed to notice that something seems to be moving under the man's skin. He doesn't know that Padgett (known in the press as The Hungry Man or Typhoid Tom) is "a runaway biological weapon," the product of an experiment gone wrong. Or maybe it hasn't.

Fortunately, Boy Scouts know they need to Be Prepared, even for monster tapeworms. The Scouts are a diverse bunch. Three of the five are nice enough, one is a typical alpha pack bully, and the fifth is almost as monstrous as the killer tapeworms. Teachers expect to see Shelley's "slack and pallid moon-face staring up at them from an oil-change pit at Mr. Lube" but Shelley seems destined for a crueler life.

True horror lies not in external threats but in the darkness that lives within us. True horror is reflected in the way people behave under extreme circumstances and in the extreme behavior of people who have been entrusted with leadership. Nick Cutter occasionally moves away from events on the island to reveal the cause of Padgett's tapeworm infection and the government's response to it through a series of journal entries, hearing transcripts, and magazine articles. Those passages remind us that not all monsters are artificially created.

Cutter has a flair for the truly vile, which is what readers generally want in horror fiction. His description of an unorthodox surgical procedure and its aftermath is vivid and intense. Death permeates the novel but the story is ultimately about the tenacity of life. Cutter uses the plot to address difficult moral questions but, in the end, a depressing story is enjoyable because those questions are presented through well drawn characters. If I could, I would give The Troop 4 1/2 stars.

I think we’ve all had those books, the ones that seem as though everyone else has already read, loved and sung their praises. For me, The Troop was one of those books. I’ve had The Troop on my Kindle since last October, I just needed to make the time to read it. If you haven’t read The Troop yet, I highly recommend that you read it too.

The Troop has to be the most sensory stimulating book that I’ve read: sight, sound, smell, even taste and touch. Nick Cutter brought all of them to life within the pages of the book. I could see the thunder clouds building, hear the waves crashing on the shore, smell the rotting flesh, taste the blood in my mouth and feel the “bioengineered nightmare” crawling underneath my skin. It truly takes an extremely talented author to bring all of this to life.

At many points while reading The Troop my stomach squirmed, I covered my eyes, I was disgusted and repulsed. The story made me feel like I was watching a gruesome horror movie. I loved it.

What a fantastic cast of characters! Cutter really went all out here. It had been a while since I read a good coming of age story, in fact, I had gotten quite tired of them. Cutter has really brought back the good old fashioned coming of age story. The boys all seemed so normal at first, but as time went on, their true natures were revealed.

I think that The Troop is one of the best books I’ve read. It should definitely be on every horror fan’s TBR list. Nick Cutter is a master of the genre.

Oh, I so loved this novel. I enjoyed the bond of the scouts and their leader Tim as they ventured onto Falstaff Island. They’d been together for quite some time, Tim being their leader but also their friend and the boys, a diverse handful. Tim realized there probably wouldn’t be many more outing, the boys were growing out of this group and soon they would go their separate ways. These scouts and their leader were not prepared for what awaited them on this camping trip.

A man stumbles in upon Tim and his scouts on their island camping trip. The man is hungry yet the looks of him have Tim questioning exactly what is wrong with him. The flesh of this man is falling off his bones and Tim, a doctor himself, wonders what disease this man possesses. I found it funny that this hungry, disgusting man is polite and had great manners as he inquiries about food. Tim contempt’s how he going to keep the scouts’ safe while keeping this man happy and away from them. Tim begins feeding the man some of their provisions. This man is beyond hungry and Tim realizes they are in deep trouble. Tim steps out and tells the scouts that they should go on their hike without him. There is some arguing but reluctantly they go. On this hike, we begin to see who these scouts really are. When the scouts return, things have taken a turn for the worse at the cabin. I can’t put the novel down now as Tim tries to keep the scouts out of harm’s way but everyone wants to see what has got Tim all excited. Tim, you tried…..you really did.

What a fantastic novel to keep me up all night! It was entertaining, exciting and fun to read. Very graphic details made the story come alive and made each of the characters unique. I loved the infection and how it thrived. I could feel the adrenaline of the individuals on the island as push came to shove, as individuals fought for survival and as they fought for their own voice. Highly recommend for those who like to read a great thriller.

Wow, what a crazy ride!
This novel hits you in the face from the very first chapter with promises of yuck and eek. And if you think the poor sucker that started it all on this island is the most disturbing part of this book, you are in for a surprise.
Hang on to your stomachs people! Pretend you are going swimming and wait half an hour before taking your brain for a backstroke in this one. I am usually a strong stomach type of person, able to pick up some really disturbing stuff, but even I turned green and teared up at some parts of this novel. And why such strong reactions?
Believability.

****** SPOILER ALERT ******
PROCEED WITH CAUTION
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Engineered Tape Worms.
Ya, you read right!
Engineered, gross, yucky, cringe-worthy, massively destructive tape worms that can take over a host and destroy you within hours, causing disgusting havoc on a human and animal body, all the while taking control of your body and brain.
Ok. So depending on who you may talk to, there may be arguments on the realism of this (I don't think it would be so far fetched, personally). But here is where the believability kicked in for me. Everyone's behavior in this story was, in my head, spot on to what I think someone would behave in every single situation in this book. Inclusive of the psychopath child that pretends to be perfectly normal within this otherwise, typical group of boy scouts.
So, let's throw in this extremely contagious 'escaped' (debatable) test subject filled with killer tapeworms on an island with a group of young boys and their scout master, and let's see what happens. This literary experiment played out in ways that I certainly imagined and didn't want to imagine. From the raw fear of infection, the predictable breakdown of trust, to the sheer determination to survive, and hopelessness that comes with a dire situation of which you cannot escape, this book was raw, gritty and frankly terrifying. It will be a long time before I can stop tearing up over the turtle scene, or the disturbing ways that one of the young boys decided to eliminate the perceived threat in his own body.
I am definitely intrigued to read more of this author's books after 'The Troop' but, no offense to you, Nick Cutter.... I think I will give it a little bit of time before I pick up the next one after what you did to me with this one.

Could have been better.

I read this because Stephen King gave it a recommendation. I didn't know what to expect, but I was happy to find out it wasn't a Zombie story.

This is probably nitpicking, but it's a pet peeve of mine when authors try to come up with original names. The only normal name was the scout master, Tim. After that, you get Kent, Eph, Max, Newt and Shelley? I'm nearly 40 years old, and I don't know anyone with those names. It kept taking me out of the story when I saw those names.

Anyway, the story itself was very good. Without spoilers, it is about a scout troop that goes on a camping trip on an isolated island. While there, they meet a stranger, who brings something evil to the group. Each character is clearly defined and you don't have any problems believing their actions.

That being said, pretty much every character was a cliche of a horror story. The strong jock, the fat nerd, the angry abused child, the buddy psychopath. But it works with this story.

SPOILERS BELOW - Questions about the ending

The end bothered me. I thought this was going to end very differently. No matter how safe the kids thought they were being to avoid the worms, they should have still gotten infected. The whole island should have been teeming with them. Everywhere the worms might have been should be infected. It seems these worms would live in any animal, so all the wildlife should have been infected. No matter what actions were taken to contain the outbreak by the military, the worms would have gotten through, if it was in a squirrel, fish or bird - the breaks in the story to give more information on the lab experiments of the worms clearly show they live in any host, not just human. And the way the worms attempt to 'spit' on new hosts to infect them, seems like the whole world should have been covered with eggs within a few days of the outbreak.

Anyway. Even with all those complaints, I still enjoyed it, and will be looking for other books by Cutter.

No, it didn’t “scare the hell out of me” but I did enjoy it. Honestly, if you’re a fan of King and the like then I don’t see how you won’t enjoy this. I did find the overall writing to be a little “predictive” in the sense that the character development was almost TOO King like, structurally. Basically, you have the present tense main story with a smattering of short, anicdotal forays into the characters past. While I didn’t mind it to the point of being “bad” I couldn’t help but notice it was a bit more “writers hand book” then I’d like. In other genres this kind of story telling isn’t bad. It’s just these kind of horror stories tend to be a little mechanical - literarily speaking.

Otherwise, I did find the story entertaining. I think the ending could have been a bit more dramatic. He could have gone in a number of directions. Instead, it sort of wraps up squeaky clean. I was hoping to see some of Newton’s dream revelation come to fruition (not a spoiler).

So if you like King or maybe even the tv series Stranger Things you’ll probably enjoy this. I’m guessing this is what they mean when they refer to a book as a good “beach read”.

I've been trying lately to read the older books on my TBR pile, but after getting this novel in the mail last week, all of my willpower disappeared. The Troop by Nick Cutter had been one of my most anticipated reads of 2017, mostly due to how much love it had gotten from you #bookstagrammers. I'm glad I didn't wait to read it.
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This has got to be one of the best stories I have read in several years (yes, even including my recent King and Hill novels). I have read other tales of biological horror, but Cutter's writing, so reminiscent of Golding's Lord of the Flies, has a way of taking you on a roller-coaster ride of emotions with every page you turn. I was fearful for the kids, angry at them, and cheering them on, all within a particular 5-page section of this incredible book. It is easy to see why this book won Cutter the James Herbert award for Horror Writing. Cutter will definitely be one person whose works I am getting, and this book just made my all-time Top 5.
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This book was heart wrenching!!!!

1 Word DISTURBING!!!!!!

The book starts off a normal Boy Scout Merit badge trip on a island in Canada. But it soon goes to "Heck in a handbag"!! Sadly the scoutmaster Tim is portrayed as a irresponsible, Thrill seeker (I really felt for the man. HE'S A DOCTOR!!! He not only has it in his make-up to help others but he took an Oath To Help Others When In Need!!!! i know personally I try to be the "good person" and try to help when I can. he made a choice that cost him and the man payed the price.) But each boy slowly shows his TRUE COLORS!! (Some of the boys were bad from the start, The bullying, name-calling, intimidation came out early on, almost 2nd nature. (view spoiler) We all think of kids as innocent, fun loving, happy young minds that are looking for guidance and drowning everyday. But these boys were not only sadistic, but VIAL!!!
[ I am happy the boys were thinking quick and on there feet, but they didn't have to do what they did to put that man in the closet, and The one boy to block the only light at the bottom of the door... JUST SADISTIC KIDS, YOUNG SOON TO BE SOCIOPATHS!!!!!!! But the book contains diary sections from the Scoutmaster and the boys, a "Research Log" (if you can call it Research IT'S CRIMINAL!!!) first it's on Gerbils,and Chimps, then thinks its a smart idea to make the jump to HUMANS!!!!! then inevitably the story goes into what happens to Subject "Typhoid Tom". It also has Testimony of Dr. Nathaniel Erikson, and Dr. Clive Edgerton A.K.A Joseph Mengele 2.0!!! (That right there says everything about this man you need to know..) SICKOS ALL THE SAME!!!! They knew from the 1st test on the Gerbil it wasn't something to further, Then the Chimp testing WENT TERRIBLE!!!!! The Research log was HORRIFIC!!! What was described was PURE TERROR!!!! (Even the observer Dr. Clive Edgerton knew Something was Very Very Wrong, and had to pass the role a few times back and forth to Dr. Erikson!! THAT RIGHT THERE SHOULD BE RED FLAGS!!! But it was not... And sadly others paid for that choice.. While they blamed Nd pointed fingers at one another. (hide spoiler)]
But the book reminds me of a Survivor like completion but with "Last Man Standing, Only 1 makes it out" rules. 5 Boy Scouts( Max Kirkwood, Ephraim Elliot, Kent Jenks, Shelly Longpre, and Newton Thorton, and a Scoutmaster(Dr. Tim Riggs) I wanted the boys to get out so bad!!!! I SCREAMED AT THE PAGES, GO, DON'T LOOK BACK, GET OUT OF THERE... But in the end. 1 made it out. The ending is a GQ Magazine article (GQ...ok) but it says Max is ok, he either doesn't remember or blocks the whole mess out of his head. [ The poor kid tried to do his best.. He really changed at the end. I just had hoped for a better outcome.... :( I think the book really is a good moral inventory checklist.
-Are you tolerant of others.
-Do you bully or make fun of others for there appearance or other factors
that make people unique.
-How far would you go to help others.
-Do you feel superior to others to the point that it can hurt you in the long run of things.
-Are you secretly EVIL.... (Think about that...) do you like hurting living things, Do you enjoy others suffering, Do you not feel for others, are you so callous that you put your sick needs before others well being.

Sadly all these boys learned these lessons the hard way. That what makes this so sad... These were kids..
Gosh this book left a bad taste in my mouth.. I enjoyed the book but it was just HEART-WRENCHING!!!

GREAT STORYTELLING!!!!! I will be reading the other books from this writer. (I was on the fence about the price of the newest book, but after reading this. NO QUESTION!!!

The Troop starts off with incredible energy and a sense of dread that makes you feel that anything could happen to an unsuspecting group of young Boy Scouts on a weekend adventure. Terror is ratcheted up even more when they meet a crazed stranger with an unnatural hunger. Things, of course, escalate from there, but seem to move in a direction of predictability, but nonetheless entertaining.

I found not only the style and structure way too similar to Stephen King, but also the sidebar of internal humorous comments that constantly pulled me out of the story. They screamed of King and anyone with any familiarity with that technique knows exactly what I am referring to. Fortunately, the premise was strong enough for me to keep reading, but I wish Cutter could have kept to his own voice.

At times, I found some of the writing to be too overly descriptive, which slowed the narrative and is another King mistake. But aside from a few technical holes here and there, this was a solid read and makes me interested to read another book by this author. Hopefully he got his Stephen King style out of his system and can write more freely without being scared to keep things dark and be true to himself.

Nick Cutter, pen name for Craig Davidson, is a masterful writer. In this book he makes you care for the characters that he will eventually destroy. He makes the book something that you can't put down, until a point. The problem with The Troop is no the superb writing, nor the character development:

It's, first, that it is not -as advertised- a horror story, not by a long shot. There's nothing scary about it. It's more gory than scary.

Second, the story dies at some point but the author keeps on going. The last 80 pages or so, you just wish for it to be over, so you can move on to the next book on your "To Read" list, but it doesn't. It keeps on going without anything new to say.

There are a lot of missed opportunities in The Troop. I can't tell you about those without spoiling it for you, but I bet that some of the readers know what those are.

I don't mean to be sacrilegious, but I think mr. King is telling us that this or that author is the next big thing, more and more often. Remember Clive Baker? He was supposed to be "The future of horror", he kind of wasn't. It makes you think about King's motivation, doesn't it?

Overall thoughts
A truly visceral, gripping, gory and yet beautifully written novel; absolutely amazing! I had previously heard that the books by this author can be hard to stomach, and I can see why. The detailed descriptions, no matter how grotesque, add a level of realism that heightened the level of horror. The story and the characters, combined with the sensational use of language, make this a fantastic read for any horror fans. The different styles of narration used in the book further boost the greatness of the book. In my opinion, this book fully deserves a perfect rating. My only complaint is that there wasn’t more of it. For a more detailed account of my thoughts, please read below, though I must warn that there might be some minor spoilers mentioned.

Plot, story & themes
The novel revolves around a group of boy scouts that are spending a few days on a deserted island, which isn’t far off from their town. During their stay here, they come across a man who’s infected with an incredibly violent and lethal parasite, which is mostly characterized by one major symptom: an insatiable hunger than causes the infected to feel the necessity to eat whatever it comes across.

The protagonists are mainly the kids that are part of the scout troop. There are some adults, though they aren’t as central to the story. However, throughout the book, some of the younger characters or the narrator note differences between the adult and the teenage world, mainly dealing with topics such as group dynamics, honesty, how they handle fear, among others. The eclectic group of teens that the story follows is written in a very entertaining and realistic way. The characters themselves are a reflection of a few of the more stereotyped roles that one can find in a high school, which are: the jock/alpha male type, the nerd type, the impulsive kid that gets in a lot of fights, the disturbed loner, and the somewhat normal kid. The interactions between them are a joy to read. Naturally, they also display normal teenage behavior, from talking about girls, to teasing each other (like in many other cases, the nerd is the victim of a lot of their pranks).

The behavior of the characters isn’t one dimensional or predictable by any means. Due to the events and situations that they’re forced into, it is shown to the reader how the different characters react and adapt to the situation. Some react by having more impulsive and thoughtless actions, others are more careful, others end up with complete psychological breakdowns.

There are certain elements of the story that are introduced by the likes of news articles, interviews after the events, logs, etc. These scattered pieces of information make the story much more entertaining, and they also foreshadow certain aspects of the story that make this book very hard to put down. They also enlighten the reader as to what caused the events of the book, and how those outside the island perceived the events.

Language, Narration & Flow
The language used by the author is amazing; it is incredibly easy to understand and there’s some truly beautiful lines. The level of detail in his descriptions take the book to a whole new level. Despite of how gruesome some of the elements are in the story, the author doesn’t shy away, and provides the reader with incredibly detailed and realistic description of what’s on his mind. This makes the story seem much more real and alive than it is. It is not all doom and gloom though, since there are some very entertaining and funny parts in the book as well. Lastly, the author makes some references to other works, mostly through the dialogue of the characters, that add up to the charm of the book. These references to popular culture also add a level of realism to the book, and further add ways for the readers to immerse themselves in the story.

Recommendations for further reading
I recommend this book mostly for horror fans. I’d also recommend this book to those that want to explore how a book can be both disgusting, brutally violent, and written through wonderful prose. It is truly a memorable read. For those of you who want to read further, my first recommendation would be The Rising by Brian Keene. While not as gory as The Troop, at least not that I can remember, it is certainly worth mentioning. Another recommendation is Carrie by Stephen King, which also tells the story with a combination of narrations, much like it was done here (the author has actually mentioned that he was inspired by Carrie for some of the elements he used in this book). Lastly, for those that want to read more about a group of boys stuck in an island, the obvious recommendation would be Lord of the Flies by William Golding.

Thank you very much for reading, and I really hope you enjoy this book (if you choose to read it)!

Previously posted at TheQwillery.com

The Troop is my second horror book for the month of October. I like reading books that creep me out to get me in the mood for Halloween and fall. While my previous book was family friendly, The Troop isn't for children. It's also not for the squeamish reader since it takes some dark turns. I honestly had to stop reading the book at times to take a break. Nick Cutter is a gifted writer of disturbing scenes and doesn't shy away from the use of gore, and I mean gag-inducing gore. Now, I would like to give a disclaimer for those of you out there who like watching The Saw or, heaven forbid, Mordum, to calm yourselves down before bed, you might not blink an eye at the events in this book. For the rest of us, it'll do its job of creeping you out.

As the title suggests, all of this alarming stuff is happening to 12- to 15-year-old boys on a boyscout adventure. For me, this is what made it almost unbearable to read. The things these boys go through are pretty grusome. As a parent, I can't imagine something like this happening, and sadly it's not that hard for this book to be reality. Cutter does a great job of developing some of the characters quickly to establish an emotional connection for the reader while some of the boys still feel a little cardboard. Cutter also openly borrows a writing technique from Carrie by injecting newspaper articles, blogs, court records and even psychological records to give the reader additional information about what's going on off the island and after the events. I enjoyed these a lot as they tease the reader into trying to guess how the book is going to end.

My only issues with the book, besides freaking me out, is how he used the boy scouts organization. There were merit badges that didn't exist and the scout law he used in the book isn't real. As an Eagle scout it always bothers me when writers bend the truth in regards to scouting. Now, I don't know maybe he had to change things up just a little bit for legal reasons or maybe the Canadian boy scout organization is slightly different from the Boy Scouts of America, and, to be honest, it's a pretty small infraction that most people wouldn't notice. It's more of a personal pet-peeve.

If The Troop doesn't creep you out, I would recommend you see a psychologist to get some help. It might not scare you, but it should be a little distressing. As a recommendation, I can't stress this enough due to the high amounts of gore, violence, adult language, and sexual imagery, this is an adults-only book. After reading this book, I'm happily returning to my regular fantasy and science fiction books for a bit.

Nick Cutter (pseudonym of respected Canadian author Craig Davidson) is fast becoming a name to be watched for horror fans. This novel, which begins with a camping trip for Canadian scouts on a remote island, represents the best of isolated, claustrophobic childhood horror. A group of young scouts, along with their troop leader, find themselves in one hell of a predicament as a stranger stumbles into their campsite one night, decimated by disease, emaciated, and horribly hungry. As the troop leader tries to maintain order and both assist the stranger and contact the mainland, all sense of order breaks down as the disease (bioengineered by a black ops government group) begins to spread.

Cutter makes wonderful use of the isolated environment and the helplessness of the boys who soon find themselves on their own… an unable to trust each other. Like the John Carpenter film The Thing… everyone may not be whom he appears to be. The boys represent all facets of the family model: the hero, the scapegoat, the mascot, the lost child… but family models can be deceiving, and the least likely of people can surprise everyone. Cutter excels at creating boys who are boys, who both hang together and divide with alarming rapidity. To say that this novel is terrifying would be a massive understatement. It represents the best of modern horror in its cynical yet nostalgic view of innocence defiled.

Alone. They are utterly alone. Troop 52 is stranded on Falstaff Island with no cell phones. They don’t plan on an infected man making his way to the island. They don’t plan on a highly contagious disease affecting them. Or the mainland abandoning them. And what happens on the island…

I guess I thought it was going to be more thriller than horror, but The Troop is all horror. Without giving too much away, the boys and their scout leader are stranded on the island when they come into contact with a very, very sick man.

The descriptions are pretty graphic. I couldn’t read the book over my lunch break. I’m not known for a particularly weak stomach, but there is something about the idea of this book that, forgive me, really gets under my skin. When I did read it, I physically squirmed a few times, had to put the book down, and then pick it up the next day. I don’t like the idea of anything like what being described here. GROSS.

The plot dragged in certain places, making the story longer than I think it had to be. A big problem for me was that I didn’t really like any of the characters. Kent is a bully and Shelley is friggin creepy. I mean Shelley, wow. I don’t want to be anywhere near a kid like that. He is probably the most horrifying part of the book. The others are okay, but none of them really stood out enough for me to want them to live. I wanted to know about what happened more than I cared about any of the characters.

The Troop is an intriguing premise that left me uncomfortable and chilled. But I wish I liked the characters more.

Thank you Mr Stephen King for recommending this novel. It was his review that brought me to the novel and it was a delicious read. Imagine being trapped on an island with no way of communicating to the outside world. Its just you and your troopmates. But not really because something more sinister has arrived on the islands thanks to the stranger that slithered his way to their camp. Something that has them cut off from the world for a reason.
This book had me sweating, not knowing how this would end. The story flows well and I couldn't put it down. I was worried about all their safety (except one and I'm sure certain readers know who I am referring to). I knew there could be no happily ever after but the ending left me satisfied.
Very happy with this novel and look forward to more from Nick Cutter.

A truly skin crawling horror novel. Nick Cutter builds a controlled experiment in terror, as a boy scout troop is stranded on island during a field trip along with a monstrous contagion. The desperation among the adolescent boys would be enough for a novel in itself. It has a slight ring of Lord of the Flies to it, as the best and worse in the boys comes to the surface as stresses increase. But the addition of the contagion ratchets it up to a whole new level. What it does to the victims both physically as well as mentally is the stuff of nightmares. The antagonism of the boys and the inside threat work in tandem to create a riveting and unsettling story. Highly recommended for not so squeamish horror fans.

I picked up this book on a whim, just because I halfway remembered somebody recommending it to me. This is a very effective horror novel. There are many things that work well for this book.

First of all, the setting is perfect and is tailored to adding to the mounting horror and feeling of being trapped and isolated that the boys are experiencing.

Second, and I don't want to give too much away, several times this book made me squirm. I've always been adverse to the idea of parasites and this book takes that fear, feeds it and makes it so much worse than you could ever imagine.

Third, the cast. I can see why somebody referenced Lord of the Flies when speaking of this book. As in that classic novel, you have a group of children, being put in a situation that just shouldn't be and things fall apart. There are some scenes of violence that are all that much more horrible because it involves children but that is what works so well for this book. The boys are all distinctly written, and how they grow and interact is engaging and gripping. You get emotionally invested in their well being and the anguish they feel at times, translates well to the reader.

This is a very well written book that will stick with the reader after reading it.

How to deal with this book?

This is not a book by a new author, it is a book written by a published author, writing horror under this pseudonym. That means this is neither a first work, nor even a sophomore book. (I have looked up the other novels and short story collections and decided they weren't my cup of tea.)

It feels like the author has grafted some very new and interesting ideas onto some well known plots and come up with something that is a quick read.

I liked the insatiable hunger that the "illness" creates. That was incredibly well done. Who hasn't been hungry? Imagine how an insatiable hunger can drive one. It drives the first victim to the point of eating dirt;, trying to derive nutrients out of the very earth to feed the thing inside him.

One of the author's mentors is Scott Smith. I find a lot of parallels between this and the Smith book, The Ruins, from the "dig it out of yourself" thread, to the "We must isolate them completely from the rest of the world." thread. I'd like to see what he does when he does not borrow heavily

Spoiler Alert: I had never heard of the South American treatments where an individual is deliberately given a tapeworm, and then given a purgative once the patient reaches their idealized weight before I read this book. In a society that does not have the medical oversight that is prevalent in the US or Canada, it is not surprising. But it's not a major stretch of the imagination to have a doctor (naturally in the "mad scientist" mold) genetically engineering a tapeworm that is "less dangerous" (of course) , not only is this is substantially more dangerous (of course), he gives it to someone (of course) and they escape (of course). Then we find that releasing it into the general population was his intention all along (of course). Now that it has been released, the military wants to see if it can be weaponized (of course)

Still Spoiling: Once the critter is inside the victim, it continues to grow, taking over hunger receptors, feeding on the host, and altering the thought processes. And as the book continues on, the critter gets smarter, apparently delighting in torturing it's victims. (this seems to be a recurring theme with Cutter)

The megalomaniac scientist either hell bent on destroying the world as we know it, or convinced in his megalomania that he/(rarely)she has all of the answers and the rest of the scientific community can take a giant leap, is getting OLD. (Also reviewing The Deep today and I have a LOT more anger towards that book than this one.)

Now let's talk about writing style and characterization. First of all, he writes very well. It is easy to visualize what is happening,and action is quite clear. Dialog is crisp and expository. There are a few occasions where we are "told" a person's character and then it is revealed in dialog, making the exposition unnecessary. I have read books that were non-stop action that the reader could get lost in what is happening. Cutter does break the action up very nicely with flash forward and current newspaper clippings of how the outside world is reacting to this. This gives the reader a break from the events and allows the book to move more freely.

Setting: The island is well evoked. While it is wide open there is still a claustrophobic feel. This claustrophobia is actually exacerbated by leaving the cabin, rather than removed (very nicely done).

Character: The characters are pretty one dimensional. There is: The Jock, The Bully, The Egghead, The Whipping Boy.... None really are well realized, and only one even remotely grows as part of the novel. The scoutmaster is probably the best realized character in the book, most fully aware of what is happening to him and the consequences of this infestation. As the critter begins to take over his body and mind, he battles it heroically. Unfortunately, he is gone from the book much too quickly.

The ending: SPOILER ALERT! After making it clear about 1/2 way through that there will be no rescue, the only boy left is the nerd.(a rescue attempt by two of the parents is literally blown out of the water) But for some reason, he isn't a threat to society and after a bit of isolation he is allowed to return to society. (Why now? Why only ONE child?) Time passes and what a shock: The critter is still in him, it's just a lot smarter. Question: How many horror novels, movies, etc. end this way? Answer: WAY too many! The horror is over, everything is back to normal, but (WINK) The thing is now dormant, but it will be back! Sleep well kiddies (WINK!)

Place a few children (usually boys) in an isolated area and allow them to get by on their own without adult supervision for a period of time, have things go south, and you are automatically going to be compared to Lord of the Flies. Have victims who desire to eat the flesh of others, and you will be compared to any one of the myriad of zombie films. Unfortunately, this compares poorly to what it is measured against.

The book is as bloody, violent and unrelenting as other reviewers has said it was. if that's not your thing, give this book a miss.

Why 3 1/2 stars? Frankly, I would give this a 2 1/2, but the scoutmaster is so well drawn, and the writer conveys his sense of letting the kids down so well that I bumped it up, and as I mentioned above, the claustrophobia grows as the action moves out doors. The writing was good and moving.

While it is not a first attempt at a novel, it is a first attempt at a horror novel and i was looking forward to his sophomore effort as a horror writer....

I'll be publishing that review today.

I really liked the premise behind THE TROOP. The cause for the infection is pretty clever and even seems like something that could happen. The book is well written, and I especially liked the author's style of cutting away to journal entries, courtroom transcripts, etc; to fill in the story. There is also something "classic" about this kind of horror story that reminds me of the horror novels I read when I was a kid.

Ultimately though, I just had a hard time really getting into this book and was kind of glad to be done with it. Part of that was some of the long, gory descriptions. I don't have a problem with gore, but just found those sections tedious and wanted more action, more story. I've also read some excellent books lately, and THE TROOP just kind of suffered in comparison.

One big criticism I had of the book was the character of Shelly. I won't spoil, but will just say his role in the story just struck me as especially over the top, unbelievable and unnecessary. The children in the book are already dealing with this unbelievable event, and oh by the way, one of them just so happens to be... Again, I won't spoil it, but it kind of struck me as throwing in everything but the kitchen sink.

Anyway, its really not a bad book and is actually a pretty good horror novel. Would make a pretty gross movie! I would just temper your expectations if you've read any of the four and five star reviews or got excited by the Stephen King blurb.

I tried to read this author's second book called The Deep, and found it to be thoroughly boring. But the rave reviews were always for this book so when I saw it on sale I bought it. I wish I hadn't. This book is also boring. It is billed as a combination of Lord Of The Flies and The Ruins, which may be true, as I have not read The Ruins, but I don't remember being this bored when I read Lord Of The Flies 35 years ago.
The author writes well, but the characters are all flat, there is no horror to speak of, just attempts to gross the reader out. This book is just way too long.
It also had the kiss of death- at least for me- which was a recommendation on the cover from Stephen King. I like most of Stephen King's books, but I can honestly say any book that sports a recommendation from him on the front or back cover nearly always is a very bad sign. The book is either boring, long winded, or a waste of time.
I will not be looking for any further books from this author.

The Troop is a return to a classic sort of horror that starts out scaring you quick, then builds and builds, letting your imagination ratchet up your fear with each chapter. As Stephen King’s quote for the book says, “Not for the faint-hearted, but for the rest of us sick puppies, it’s a perfect gift for a winter night.”

Scoutmaster Tim Riggs gets the fun job of leading a troop of fourteen-year-old boys into the heart of the Canadian wilderness to teach them about survival and roughing it. He happens to be a medical doctor and feels like he can handle whatever nature can throw at him, and has never had any issues before. That is, until now.

A stranger shipwrecks himself on the island and soon runs into the scoutmaster and the boys, and he is very, very sick. There is something inside him, eating him away, turning him to skin and bones. Riggs watches this before his very eyes as he tries to help the suffering man, who soon dies of what appears to be starvation. It is a sad day for the troop, but they must move on. Except, Riggs is noticing that he now has this growing hunger within him that cannot be satiated; he knows that he is sick, and whatever that poor man had he now has.

The boys know they must now fend for themselves, but Cutter has done a great job of creating an interesting cast of characters here, as each boy is individual with his hang-ups and issues, and as the reader follows the story along, it’s discovered that there are some real special kids here with some big personal and psychological problems. Combine that with this strange sickness and the harshness of the Canadian wilderness, and you’ve got yourself one hell of a story going.

Cutter intersperses chapters with reports, interviews, articles and documents recorded after the ending of the story, which just helps to pique the reader’s interest further. While towards the end some storylines get dragged out a bit, overall the book keeps you hooked to the end, which you have no real clue about. This is horror at its best: making you want to stop reading right away, but knowing you physically are unable to.

Originally written on April 18, 2014 ©Alex C. Telander.

For more reviews, check out the BookBanter site: http://www.bookbanter.net.

I happened to see Cutters other recent book, THE DEEP and enjoyed it so I picked up The Troop at the Library! Hope the store lets the review stay! Both works are very enjoyable if you like suspense and horror. Not too difficult to get through and it will keep you reading and turning that page. If you enjoy the type of horror in John Carpenters’ The Thing, you might really enjoy this, many of the same gooie slimey disgusting monsters along with some very believable characters. Some of the slimy parts were a bit more than I like but that is personal taste. And the characters are well detailed and believable, even those that don’t get much page time. Some might say the situation on the island becomes something like Lord of the Flies; I would put a bit of Stand By Me by Stephen King into the mix. Those interested in sci fi dealing with run-away genetics should also check this out, the formal reports and court testimony that end a number of chapters show us the back and post story points but also paint a bleak picture for the future. These modern day Frankensteins are much worse than the original and part of the scare is thinking that someone is problem on the verge of doing something like this for all the wrong reasons. Sort of like the scientist in Margaret Atwood's works.
Can’t wait for his next book! Someone to keep an eye on. The cover says he has written other works but does not name them, anyone know what that is about?

Wow..I actually had to skip parts because I can't stand when bad things happen to innocent animals. I will explain that the story is about a scout troop of boys who go camping on an island. A strange man appears at the door to the cabin, on the island and exclaims "I'm Huunnggrrryyy!" And it all goes down hill from there. Unbeknownst to the kids and the troop leader..one kid has a dark side that is let loose once the island is quarantined. So that is where the animal parts came from I had to skip. It was an excellent scary sci- Fi story, I never knew what was coming! I also like the author broke up the story with military reports, scientific reports, magazine articles,tribunal texts, and even an email or 2!

This was the first book by Nick Cutter that I have ever read. And while I am quick to say that I didn’t like this book, I will say this, it held my attention and kept me reading. I will read more by Mr. Cutter, but I will have to let this one marinate for a while first. The story line was gripping and unpredictable, his use of suspense and human universalities was reminiscent of King’s work, and the horror was both gruesome and internal. While that would in most cases pull a four-star review form me, this book also failed for me in several aspects. Cutter’s use of descriptive metaphors often left me laughing rather than grossed out, a good trick, but not the intended reaction. The characters are more archetypal characters rather than real people. They are the standard child characters that can be seen in any Disney show, and that made me secretly hope that they all would die. The one thing that I can say about this book is that while reading it, any time my stomach growled, I thought, if only for a second, that I was being eaten alive by tapeworms. That feeling alone made it worth the time and money.

Nick Cutter’s “The Troop” is everything you’d expect in a horror novel. It has a “government experiment gone wrong” mixed with a large amount of “The Lord of the Flies”, topped off with a dash of Stephen King and finished with just the right amount of creepy crawlies.
In Cutter’s novel, a Scout troop and their leader set out to spend the weekend hiking and camping on a desolate island on the outskirts of Prince Edward Island. While there however, their quiet serenity is disrupted when a very ill stranger comes to their cabin in search of assistance. This stranger brings with him a government-developed “weapon” that quickly spreads throughout the troop— forcing the group to fight to survive while faced with such a bizarre and imminent threat.
Cutter has a similar style of writing to Stephen King, and the plot of “The Troop” showed some resemblance to “Lord of the Flies”, however, Cutter’s writing is unique and should be given its own credit. The characters were well developed, the settings were very typical “horror movie” (think: abandoned cabin, dark forests, pitch black caves, etc.) and the story had a somewhat satisfying ending. Cutter also reveals a disturbing reality of the human race and a reader is forced to confront the terrifying realities of what humans are willing to do to survive, and what they are willing to do to society (and each other) to protect themselves and their values. Is a group of children worth sacrificing “for the greater good” of all?
Cutter’s novel was entertaining and definitely one that any fan of horror writing will devour (pun not intended).

This book starts out well enough but soon, about midway through the book, it becomes little more than torture porn. The author knows nothing of subtlety, going for graphic descriptions of terrible things happening to children rather than the far more effective use of suggestion and letting your imagination fill in the blanks, as all great masters of horror do, including Stephen King at his best. Too bad I wasted my time with this book after reading the blurb he wrote on the cover of this book

There is a blurb on the back that essentially calls it a mix of Lord of the Flies and 28 Days Later. I love both of those works so I was all whoo-hoo! and anxiously dug in over the weekend. It is a nice, quick, pulpy read. Reminded me a lot of earlier King and some of those ooey-gooey 80s works from the pulp paperback rack at Hills. I loved it.

The story begins with Scoutmaster Tim taking his troop of five boys on their yearly campout on a remote island off the coast of Canada. During the first night, a stranger stumbles into their midst. A man disturbingly gaunt and pale yet voraciously hungry. He sets things on a rapid and downward spiral that will leave you dizzy. Without a chance to catch your breath, the pacing hastens, the sick man gets sicker, and Tim tries to help but endangers himself and the boys in the process.

The viral threat the man has ushered into camp soon becomes a catalyst for some real struggle as the boys find themselves sans supervision and left on their own to survive—the elements, the monstrously unsettling contagion, and themselves. We see their true colors shine through, and they aren’t all bright and pretty.

I’d really love to give more details, but I don’t want to spoil anything. I will say that I enjoyed The Troop a great deal. I found it invigoratingly fun and entertaining. Is it perfect? Not at all. The structure with the interview excerpts and science-y stuff messed with the flow for me (the science itself is a bit wonky), and the military conspiracy angle is as hokey as can be, but it’s just a book, so I rolled with it. Where it really shines is in its gross-out moments where the contagion shows itself and when we see the boys begin to show themselves. It is brutal in places and tragically sad in others.

The plot is pretty straightforward – a Boy Scout troop, stranded on a small island off the coast of Prince Edward Island, is exposed to a biologically engineered parasite that eats its victims alive from the inside out. The scout leader (the town doctor) and the five boys are at the mercy of a gruesome invader that not only gradually destroys the human host (in grisly detail), but uses the host’s body to spawn new organisms - all while making the host very hungry and delusional (which is not a good combination). The victim will eat anything and will try to infect anybody… you get the gory picture. The comparisons to Lord of the Flies, Alien, John Carpenter’s The Thing, and 28 Days Later are pretty apt. Combined elements of all of these tales are evident in The Troop by Nick Cutter.
I have some mixed reactions regarding The Troop, but not because of the nature of the story. While my idea of horror involves less - as opposed to more - gore and guts, I am able to go along for the ride when there are some unique twists. With The Troop, the graphic storytelling involves children – and believe me there is no holding back on the part of the author. Some people were disgusted by this. I wasn’t. The read was disturbing – that is true – but it was disturbing in the way that The Walking Dead episode involving Carol and Lizzie was disturbing (I will say no more). That was a powerful episode for a TV show, and Mr. Cutter writes equally disquieting passages in The Troop.
The overall narrative was fairly uncomplicated, but the author had some rip-roaring scenes involving infestation. In fact there were two (yes, two, which rarely happens to me anymore) incidents that made the hairs at the back of my neck tingle for just a second. In both cases, they involved one of the boys (Kent), and they were only a handful of words in both cases – but they hit their mark. Mr. Cutter also intersperses transcripts from a government inquiry among the chapters to help fill in backstory and propel the plot. I found these devices rather effective.
I think the main problem for me was related to point-of-view. Unfortunately, the author uses a third person-omniscient point of view. There is a lot of head-jumping among the characters – sometimes within the same sections and even the same paragraph. The result is a little jarring, because you end up trying to reorient whose state of mind is being addressed. Given the nature of the story, the author needed to tell the story from multiple different perspectives, but I think he could have taken a more third-person limited perspective within sections or chapters. That way, the reader is assured whose perspective is “seeing” the action and whose emotions are on “display”. Speaking of emotions, another limitation of this omniscient point of view was the author was never truly inside the heads of his characters, so they remained rather distant as if they were being kept at arms-length from the reader. Finally, the kids were all fourteen, but the omniscient point of view resulted in descriptions of their actions and affective reactions that were way beyond the capacity of adolescent males of this age.
In summary, The Troop is a gruesome and eerie horror tale that maintains a suspenseful pace, even though avid horror-readers will probably predict where things will end up (and if they can ignore some distracting point of view issues). I give The Troop a 4ish rating.

Gore for gore's sake, like a bad teen horror flick. If you don't mind constantly feeling like you want to vomit, then maybe this book is for you. A good horror story builds from normalcy to the unspeakable, which makes the reader care about what happens to the characters. These teens are so unlikeable that one merely turns away in disgust when the disgusting happens. Conversely, the scenes of animal abuse are disturbing and sad. Comparing this book to Lord of the Flies is like comparing Munch's "The Scream" to a dog turd.

This book starts out as a fascinating story about a drunk guy, down on his luck. He agrees to take part in a medical experiment which goes horribly wrong. He escapes to a small town, where he sits down at a diner and eats plate after plate of food, because he has this unending NEED TO FEED.

Ok, great set-up. Then what happens? He goes to a deserted island, for no apparent reason. Well, he expects it to be deserted, but there’s a Boy Scout Troop of kids, with their Scoutmaster, camping near the beach.

This is what I don’t get: why the bloody hell did he go to the island? The food that he desperately NEEDED was in the town. So, what motivation would make him go to an island, which probably had no food? It doesn’t make any sense. Unless, of course, he just went there to die, which I doubt.

So, the Scoutmaster just happens to be a doctor. Isn’t that convenient for the plot? Of course it is.

I’m waiting on the edge of my seat to find out what happens to this guy when… The stuipd kids go on a hike for like 100 annoying pages. And, the Scoutmaster stayed behind to care for their sick guest.

What the hell? What happened to the guy? We don’t get back to the Scoutmaster and the sick guy for another 100 or so pages. This drove me absolutely crazy. Reading about the stupid kids trying to get their retarded merit badges. I don’t bloody care. Get back to the interesting guy already!

That being said, it’s an awesome book. Once they get back to the sick guy, things get crazy, and I couldn’t put it down. It was so engaging, all the way to the end.

The Troop is a gripping mix of psychological and parasitic horror that will leave you wincing at some of the descriptions and rooting for some of the protagonists faced with overwhelming odds, my skins crawling just thinking back to those little f**kers at the guts of this story.

Five boy scouts and their scout master head of too Falstaff Island for a weekend of camping, sleeping in a cabin, earning their badges, the usual stuff but for the unplanned arrival of a boat and a man who is barely a skeleton, desperate for something to eat, suffering dementedly at the hands of something unthinkable.

Pretty soon the man’s dead, the scout leaders showing similar symptoms and survival rests in the hands of five young teenagers.

This is all about what the fourteen year old stereotypical boys do when faced with an unseen disaster, how each of the different personalities respond to extremely disturbing circumstances and the realization that no one’s coming to rescue them.

Kent is the jock with a mouth to match his athletic ability and self-elected leader, Ephraim or Eff, is the short-tempered rebel, the only boy in their grade who smokes and he hangs out with close friend Max, who finds himself dragged along in his wake. Max has a remoteness that sets himself apart from the others, a cool self-control that will see him spring to the forefront when adversity slaps them in the face.
Newton is the overweight nerd with a superior intellect, who attracts the boy’s torments like a wasp homing in on your ice cream and Shelley is the loner, a budding sociopath who has an uncanny ability to open doors in people and manipulate them, he soon finds the perfect opportunity to realise his darkest dreams.

Events on the Island are entwined with news reports, evidence logs and sworn testimony from various sources, leaking information about the horror’s that the boy’s face from the viewpoint of the outside world.

My favourite part of the story was the character development of the two boys Shelley and Ephraim, Shelley shows all the makings of a serial killer in training, a psychotic individual who homes in on Ephraim, subtle at first, sowing seeds of doubt in the fellow scout’s mind, festering, playing with his temper and worming deeper, exploiting his psyche, his weaknesses.

The Troop is a disturbing read, the horror elements are done exceptionally well, the pace is consuming and I certainly recommend this, here's one of my favourite quotes from the book –

‘He couldn't get a grip on his sudden fear: it slipped through the safety bars of his mind and threaded—wormed—into the shadowy pockets where nightmares grew’.

Recommended - 4.5 stars

Gross. Oh, so gross.

It was a book that made me hesitant to read further, while not being able to look away. A 14-year-old Boy Scout troop is enjoying their annual weekend camp at an island when a worm infested man rows to shore. It's all downhill from there.

Take the writing style found in Stephen King's Carrie, and mix it with the disgusting skin-crawling descriptions from The Ruins by Scott Smith and you have The Troop.

Even more impressive than the story, however, was Cutter's ability to write SUCH amazing similes and colorful descriptions of the sights, sounds, tastes and feels of the horror throughout. It's a book I couldn't even skim, since the language and choice of words were so skillfully written.

Definitely not for everyone, but for those who love the occasional eww-factor, this is a must read.

What could be worse than being stranded on an uninhabited island? How about being stranded there with a deranged lunatic who is infected with highly-infectious parasitic worms. Not enough? Well, how about not just being stranded, but physically trapped there by shadowy military forces who won't let so much as a bird or fish escape its shores. Still not enough? Well, how about being trapped there, fighting the parasitic worms inside you, with an adolescent sociopath who is only too happy to exploit the situation. Still not enough? Well, how about we add a thin layer of conspiracy, with the very tangible suggestion that those military forces are deliberately allowing the horror to play out. Gotcha.

Yes, in a book that's been described as part Lord of the Flies and part 28 Days Later (which isn't a bad comparison, even if it only tells half of the story), The Troop proves to be a throwback to old-fashioned, late 80s, pulp horror, with a little 90s cynicism mixed in. Nick Cutter has crafted a grisly tale here that pulls no punches, and which wastes absolutely no time in getting to the good stuff.

At first, the story structure seems a little odd, especially since it spoils its own ending early on. The bulk of the story takes place in real time, exploring the Boy Scout troop's struggle to survive a situation they barely even understand. Spaced in between chapters, however, is a series of newspaper articles, scholarly pieces, and courtroom transcripts of the inquiry that is destined to follow. Ultimately, however, that second layer of storytelling really enhances the story, adding additional weight to the situation, and creating new doubts and questions for the reader. It also creates more of a mystery than we might have otherwise expected, as we try to guess which of the boys is the sole survivor.

The contagion at the heart of the story is as disgusting as it is brilliant. If you've ever thought a tapeworm was gross, or shuddered at the thought of people who deliberately subject themselves to said worms in a desperate effort to lose weight, then get ready to lose your lunch. The tapeworms here are genetically engineered to be ruthless parasites who quickly devour their hosts from the inside out, creating in them a ravenous, insatiable hunger. We're talking men who, in a matter of hours, begin to look like desiccated walking corpses, and who will chow down on anything they can get their hands on - from bugs, to dirt, to the wooden splinters of the cabin floor. Then, just to add to the ick factor, you can see the tapeworms wrapped around their victims' spinal cords, making their back-flesh flow and undulate.

As for that teenage sociopath, I don't want to spoil one of the darkest aspects of the story, but he's the creepiest part of the tale, simply because he's so human. There's an extended scene that will stick with you for a very long time, where he not only convinces another Scout that he's infected, but all-too-easily talks him into slicing himself up in a futile attempt to catch the tiny worms inside. What he does to the first Scout to be infected is even worse, not just because it's so cruel and so playfully callous, or because it gives him a disturbing hard-on, but because he contrasts it to the abuse of a kitten that first catapulted him over the line from curious to sociopathic.

If you're in the mood for a good, intense horror story, and have the strong stomach needed to make it through to the end, then be sure to check out The Troop. Just be careful what you touch, eat, drink, or breathe, because that next pang of hunger just might be something more . . .

Genre:
Horror (Pulp Terror)

PRO: Original plot and setting. It could have been written by Stephen King.

CON: Seems to lose pace close to the end.

RATING: 3.5 of 5

In every possible way, this could have been written by Stephen King.

It has the same level of character development. The author does an excellent job in showing you who to root for without telling you—a hallmark of any gripping fiction. The imagery is off-the-charts vivid. The thoughts of individual characters are wispy and real. It is easy to imagine the turmoil going through their minds. Again, the author does a wonderful job at bringing madness to the minds of the actors. The plot itself could arguably be a mashup of a few other tales, but only in the place, not in the unfolding. For example, most of the events unfold on an island. And it involves boys. So it could be argued that this is like Lord of the Flies, but with a terror angle. However, the story line doesn’t unfold anything like Lord of the Flies, they are not cast aways and they are not in a struggle, tribe against tribe, to establish dominance or survival. In this way, the author has created a unique set of circumstances (a group of scouts), with unique characters (that do remind me of the boys in Stephen King’s The Body) with a catastrophic problem (a highly contagious worm infestation).

Yet, as much as there is that is uniquely perverse in such a story, for me there is just as much to detest. I have rarely been able to make it through a novel like this without thinking, “Well, that would be disgusting if it had style.” Stories like Desperation, Dreamcatcher or The Regulators seem to do great with the setup, but fail when the really scary things start to happen. It’s all believably described until the moment when the terror element is added in. I don’t want this to devolve into a review about King and there are exceptions (The Shining or Delores Claiborne), but when this kind of story is made into a movie, it is seems to end up as a B movie relegated to the bargain bin at the local video store.

As a written novel, The Troop by Nick Cutter is distinctive. I recommend it to all fans of Stephen King’s style of pulp terror (probably not a real genre).

This book is descriptive and shocking. It is a story of depravity where the real protagonist is hidden in plain site and the hero wins at the cost of everything he holds dear.

I won't finish this book. Too boring.

Stephen King recommended it. He said that's a classic horror story. I translate it by it's an old-fashioned horror story. I'm sure King didn't learn anything new in it.

In fact, it's a mix of Alien (first movie) and an old zombie movie. When we see the monster at the beginning, he acts exactly like a zombie in those movies. And the description of the beast going out of his body brings irresistibly to mind the scene in which the beast sprang from inside John Hurt's body.

Instead of being in a spaceship, the characters are on a small island. Instead of a crew, it's a troop of scouts. Everybody tries to flee the beast and the island.

The army comes but is only interested in capturing the monster and the beast. Just like the robot and the guys who paid for the mission in Alien.

The boys turn against each other and their ignorance of the island increase the level of difficulty to survive.

If you like that description, pay for this book. Personally, I'm disappointed.

**I originally had this at at 3 stars but months after reading it, it is still living with me and popping up in my mind so I've upgraded it.

It’s been a long time since I read a book that had me holding my hand up to my mouth so many times. Technically you do that to stop bad things coming out, hence it is a reaction to lying, but in this case, I think it was to make sure nothing tried to crawl down my throat. In terms of a visceral experience this book seriously delivers.

Who am I to disagree with Stephen King, this is a real old school horror. It takes a while to build into the story and to reach fever pitch levels but when it does it does not let go.

I hear some people could not put this down, once I was 3/4 in I actually had to keep putting it down every ten minutes just to breathe some fresh air and let my brain reset. Kids killing animals, each other and themselves just got to me at times.

I understand from the Author he was somewhat emulating the structure of Carrie with his use of interview and notes in between chapters, but in this case I found it a bit distracting. Some of them were great and worked and made me literally squirm but some really broke up the action and gave away too much. The second I knew the number of survivors, it became a distraction for me as I could not help but focusing on who I wanted to make it.

I’m really glad I read this despite the fact that it made me feel very uncomfortable. I honestly wish I had found more enjoyment in it but the Author did too good a job at getting into my head and screwing with my mind

For you sick puppies out there!

**SPOILERS** **SPOILERS** just consider this whole review to be **SPOILERS**

When you start messing with kittens, you lose me.

Odd that it works that way. Cannibalism, seething worms, defecation, vomit and so much more. There's little about these topics that unnerve me --I'm a mom after all-- but start messing with kittens and puppies and you'll actually manage to get me to stop reading. (I waited and began again just skipping over that part)

THE TROOP though is good in almost every other way. The author goes full steam ahead into the story but doesn't neglect his characters. There is plenty of backstory that is thrown in. Histories and perspectives that makes the characters likeable and sympathetic, and which certainly act to intensify the drama.

The other thing Cutter does brilliantly is intertwine different timelines. We have the Troop on the island. Reports from a local newspaper, oblivious of the tragedy that is unfolding. With hints from the future and from reports, all of which make the book the proverbial page-turner.

THE ENDING
There wasn't just a single ending. There are multiple endings, some involving the kids, with others that involving the government.

This was a mistake, in my opinion. The book was high impact with the author's brilliant handing of the psychological break down of the characters before this. And bringing in all this superfluous stuff is something you'd see in a made for TV movie. In theme and substance is wasn't original at all.

All-in-all, I'd give this book 3.5 STARS. It's certainly better written than your average book. The author's handing of emotions and backstory is just excellent. And where the terror lay for me was in how people reacted to the threats.

Would only suggest for hard-core horror fans that don't mind some sexual content and animal abuse. The over use of violence and descriptors made me think the book was targeted to young men. And I do think it would have made an absolutely fantastic Graphic Novel.

Hello,

I picked up this book at the local Wal-Mart and bought it because it looked interesting. It's not the greatest book ever, but it was definitely well worth the read. I would like to clarify my rating, I would actually give this book 4 1/2 stars. It's not good enough to be a 5 star book, but it's better than a 4 star book.

The story is about Scoutmaster Tim and the 5 scouts, about 14 years old, that visit Falstaff Island every year to have a scouting adventure. It's not one of those books where the leader is a creep, in fact he's a very good scoutmaster. The five boys are Shelley, Newt, Max, Ephraim and Kent. The scouts love him and he looks out for them. The campout goes awry when a stranger comes to the cabin where the 6 people are staying. The stranger is a very sick man an voraciously hungry. Tim is the town's doctor and he can't turn away someone that's so obviously hungry. What Tim and the boys don't know is that the stranger is a science experiment gone incredibly wrong. A Dr. Edgerton, taking money from two groups, was trying to create both a miracle weight loss solution and also a biological weapon.

I know you are wondering how those two things would work together, well you are going to have to read the book to find out.

Cutter wrote this book based on the template Stephen King used for "Carrie". As it does for King's book, this method works for "The Troop". I would definitely recommend this book for most people that likes exciting fiction. However if you are a bit squeamish, this probably isn't the book for you.

Well done Nick!

themusicaddict

The Troop by Nick Cutter starts with a crazy man with an insatiable appetite making a Boy Scout troops camping trip on Falstaff Island into something of an oddity. Then it becomes a gory nightmare novel full of fun descriptions of disgusting acts and body parts that are not supposed to be outside of bodies.

This is a contagion book, very typical fare, except this contagion is...worms? Yes! Terrifying tape worms start to eat away at the body and make a person into an eating machine. They infect the host, breed inside of him or her, and then kill their host.

The book follows a troop of five boys and their scoutmaster as they deal with the contagion. It starts as 28 Days Later, and slowly becomes Lord of the Flies as the kids start turning on each other, and, inevitably, hurting each other.

The book doesn't have an exceptionally large or interesting plot, but enough of one to let the gory stuff happen. It also doesn't have any interesting characters (all are typical teens of the horror genre). That said, it's really well-written, moving at a breakneck speed and only slowing down to give us all the gross details. It's not a horror book, for me, in that regard. It's a survival novel that's not for the squeamish.

The Troop is pretty bare-bones in a few areas, but it makes for a fun, disturbing read that fans of gore and horror are sure to enjoy.

If you excuse the corneyism of this opening sentence, this book reads like a teenage horror fan's dream. Which as everyone knows, is a nighmare. *grins*

A battalion of boy scouts are given the luxury of a trip to an isolated island for a heightened "learning experience" but what they get out of the trip is way beyond everyone's expectations, including those of the reader.

The horror starts to unfold when the leader hears noises after sunset when the scouts are put to bed, knowing that they should be alone on the island. It turns out that the noises are caused by an emancipated looking individual who approaches the scouts dwelling as if he is about to expire from starvation. (Or he already has?) The leader takes pity on the "thing" given his humanitarian beliefs, and allows it to enter and eat at the hut.

What happens you will need to find out for yourself. *grins*

The writing from the author of thus work (Nick Cutter, which is not his real name) is perfectly balanced. It is not too wordy and the story moves along at a decent pace. Not too fast, and not too slow. Characterisation is excellent. Tension is set right up to maximum. Horror scenes are beautifully drawn and overall the tale itself is very frightening. Given the calibre of people who have supported this book, I am not surprised.

Four stars for this effort from me. Looking forward to reading more scary stuff from this author.

BFN Greggorio!

The author is incredibly indulgent with unnecesary description. He takes the liberty of using 100 words when 10 will more than suffice. The very worst thing about this book however is the INCREDIBLE amount of detail around animal cruelty and torture he forces the reader to suffer through. Good writers can develop thrill and horror without being so disgustingly over the top. Cutter is no such writer.

I hated this book.

Take an earnest Scoutmaster and his five young charges, and put them on a small deserted island for a 2 day field trip. Then mix in an intruder, a hideously thin, dying man who also happens to carry a gruesome potential weapon inside his body, making him perhaps the most dangerous person on the planet. In The Troop, Nick Cutter wastes no time in getting the gore going, and going heavily.
There are, of course, many different types of horror. There's the intense, psychological ghost story, where the true horror is in what's NOT described. The Troop is not that type. Cutter makes no attempts at art here; the story is simple and fairly predictable. The question is, do you have the stomach to get through it? The author lovingly describes in nauseating detail the horrific fates of his characters, and does so with an expert's touch. It's not without it's flaws; despite the constant disgusting bloodletting, The Troop drags at times. And his big finale comes off more as vague and desperate rather than shocking. But all in all The Troop is an enjoyable read if you love horror.

The main problem I had with The Troop was the dissidence among the points of view. While certainly having the point of view of the afflicted was interesting, I think it took a lot of the drama out of the book right from the beginning. Also, I wasn't sure who this book was aimed at. The adult perspectives didn't fit in a YA title, and the children's perspective seemed a bit too young for the rest of the material to appropriate.
Finally, as when many adults try to write children Nick Cutter seems to have fallen into a very typical trap. His children are too young to be believed to react and act the way they do to situations. They were like mini-adults and in some cases far too aggressive mini-adults. This is the trap with doing children and not even Orson Scott Card was able to do it believably.
I did not enjoy the Troop, I thought it was badly written and was overall not very good. The books that the teaser refers to are leagues better than this one in every aspect and to compare them is misleading to perspective readers. It's like a badly told campfire story with too many points of view to make it scary.

Three things attracted me to this book: 1) Stephen King's praise; 2} the genre: horror and 3) idea of discovering a writer who was new to me. In fact, by the time I had finished the book, I was almost ashamed of having read it. About halfway through there is a scene involving the abuse of a kitten; I found the detailed description revolting and I put the book down, something I am loathe to do when I've read so much into a book. Grossness isn't horror. A writer can convey the pleasure a sadist takes in doing his thing without being as specific and as revolting ( in quite a few parts of the book ) as Mr. Cutter is. By the way, the writer definitely does have talent; he simply needs to reconsider what he's doing. There is always the power of understatement, of suggestion. One of the things that encouraged me to pick the book up again was a comment I had read that the ending packed a punch. In my opinion, it didn't. I know the book has received high praise from some other the store reviewers. My opinion may be a minority voice.

Let me say this. It started out great. It was scary and intriguing. And then went down hill and moved so slow.The book could have been cut in half. I actually think Cutter is a good writer and i felt everything that went on, but he needs a couple things.
1. Plot. I can tell you the whole plot of this story in two minutes. It's tiny.
2. He needs an editor. Here's my example: tiny bit of plot. description description example description. tiny bit of plot. description description more and more description example. tiny bit of plot. And so on...

I am not a particularly squeamish person. I can read most Stephen King without even flinching. But there parts of this book that had me cringing and needing to walk away. At certain points, I didn't even know if I could go on reading because the graphic stuff was really bothering me, enough that I even had a nightmare (and I never have nightmares about books). But I did finish, and overall I can say that I sort of enjoyed it--when I wasn't feeling grossed out--and it certainly left me thinking. The subject matter is terrifying. A killer contagion is unleashed on an isolated island, and a troop of close-knit teenage Scouts must attempt to grapple with the horror alone. And the characters are, for the most part, compelling. In my opinion, The Troop was Stephen King's The Stand (killer virus) meets The Lord of the Flies (kids unrestrained, inflicting savagery on each other) with a dash of the The Hunger Games (deadly survival of the fittest). So if you're a fan of those books, you might like this one. Just beware of the ick factor.

This is a surprisingly good story. It's hard not to draw some level of comparison to Lord of the Flies since both stories involve a group of boys faced with survival absent adult leadership. Cutter finds a nice balance between presenting a grisly story and taking the time to give us some well-developed characters. The only thing that detracts from the story overall is the ending, which I feel sort of cheapens the work overall - too "Hollywood-ish".

4.5*
The Troop was a gut wrenching read which sees scouts being taken camping to a small island for the weekend and unknowingly coming into contact with a bioengineered parasite.

The layout of this book was really engaging with chapters of the story interspersed with interviews, courtroom transcripts and news reports. These add to the story, giving information about the parasite and also teasing the reader about who will make it off the island. It also serves to make a few statements about medical ethics and how they can be corrupted.

The characters were engaging right from the start of the story, each one fleshed out nicely with back story that supports some of the behaviour seen on the island. Be warned that this is not a read for those who are uncomfortable with violent situations involving children. It was hard at times to read some of this book as the author does a great job in ensuring that you're heavily invested in the outcome of the scouts. Highly recommended.

I read this because Stephen King said it "scared the hell out of him." And even though it did not do that for me (nothing does - sadly), it is one of the best horror stories I have ever read. I classify a story as "horror" when truly horrible things happen to people - things they do not deserve and over which they have no control. And that happens in spades to Scoutmaster Tim and his troop.

Nick Cutter (whoever he or she is) did a number of things right. #1 a horrible premise (being devoured from inside by an unstoppable parasite); very interesting, human characters (it would have been even better had drawings of the characters been included - why does no one do this?); a great back story which answers the key questions of why and how (oftentimes not provided in this genre).

And, in addition, great descriptions of how the characters were feeling, and what was happening to them. But the coup De Graz was casting one of the boys in the troop as a psychopath. Brilliant.

I really was uncomfortable with the death of some of the animals, but the remorse of the young boy who did the killing was very real and helped me get over it.

I highly recommend this for horror fans. It is now one of my favorites - If you liked Scott Smith's "The Ruins," you will love "The Troop."the

5/20/16
English
Dillon Boivin

The Troop Review

The Troop by Nick Cutter is a modern day horror story about troop 52 and their camp out in the Canadian wilderness. After setting everything up at camp the boys encounter a man but their is something wrong with him. After scoutmaster Tim makes all the boys leave the cabin he takes the man in and tries to help him. When he notices something is wrong with him.
I would recommend this book to the readers that want to be scared and have a sense of adventurism. Nick Cutter does an amazing job telling the story of these campers and their encounter with a bioengineered nightmare. The author doesn't over write anything but he explains everything in great detail. Nick does a good job with never having a dull moment in the book and catches you by surprise constantly and keeps you on edge. Nick brings real emotions into the story and makes you feel everything the characters are feeling.
This book is for the person that wants to feel connected to the characters and be scared. This book has a lot of action and adventure feels to it and reminds the reader of modern day horror movies and books.

I don't even know where to start. I was completely enthralled in this book from the first chapter. But I must warn you... if parasites, insects, or WORMS make you queasy then run. Run as fast and as far from this book as humanly possible. I haven't read a truly terrifying yet could be completely possible horror story in years. This book is plausible, which is just as scary as the monstrosities it details. I recommend this to anyone who loves a good scare. My boyfriend enjoyed hearing my squeals of horror and then would stare me down until I'd explain what I just read. Then he'd just nod and continue to read The Iliad. I'm still not sure if those were nods of WTH? or nods to hide his disgust.

This book had too many descriptions of animal torture or injury for my taste. The horror was mostly derived from disgusting descriptions of the aforementioned animal abuse or the mechanisms of the antagonist(s). In the beginning there were some elegant and accurate (for me) descriptions of fear that made me think I was in for a great ride (they reminded me of Stephen King's descriptions), but the rest of the story didn't fulfill that early promise.

I read this book because it was favorably compared to Scott Smith's The Ruins, but for me, there's no comparison. The Ruins evoked genuine creepiness and fear while this book simply evoked sadness and disgust. I think a comparison to Lord of the Flies is apt, but I disliked that one as well.

I've only read the first 4 chapters, so I'll probably come back & revisit this review when I've finished, but ... if the rest of the story is as good as the first 4 chapters, I've got a new "favorite" author, & I can't wait for the movie that simply *has* to be made.

I can see already where some people are talking about the "standard tropes" of the teenage characters, but really, I think it's quite difficult to come up with a book of this nature WITHOUT using those tropes. Beyond that, the author's metaphors are like a crockpot of chili ... fresh, tasty, & hot. Well-written, so far original enough, & moves *very* quickly into the creepy ... no long, drawn-out "character study" while you wait for The Nasty to show.

I'm hooked.

I love a good horror novel, but this was over the top in ways that made me completely uncomfortable. The vivid and explicit descriptions of animal torture were totally unnecessary and added ZERO to the plot. If you want to describe a kid as sociopathic, it's one thing to say he tortured & killed animals for pleasure. Another entirely to describe in excruciating detail every twisted thing that was done to them. Not necessary. Really detracted from the book, as far as I'm concerned. Would not recommend to others for this reason.

Nick Cutter is pretty clear about The Troops's literary influences. He takes his epigram from Golding, and gives a direct shout-out to King in his afterword, as well as acknowledging a debt to Scott Smith. (I bet you $5 anyone who read The Ruins can pick out the scene in The Troop most likely to have been one of the suggestions Cutter mentions having adopted.) So The Troop being Lord of the Flies crossed with The Ruins hung on Carrie's narrative framework should not be a surprise to anyone. The only surprise is that the novel manages to be so oh-so-much more than the sum of its parts.

All horror is, at some level, about vulnerability and isolation. Cutter's set up, which strands a troop of children on a deserted island and then drops what amounts to a bioweapon on their heads, dials both of those elements up to eleven, then craftily darts in to provide material outside the main narrative that serves to further amp it up. And despite Grant's Parasite having landed a few months prior to The Troop's release, the stories are different enough that I can still give Cutter credit for putting an original spin on what's basically a tapeworm zombie novel. Well, a tapeworm zombie novel starring Ralph and Piggy.

A word of warning to the curious here: The Troop is fantastically, amazingly disgusting. Your skin will crawl, your toes will curl, and you may decide never to eat again. I say this in a good way, and as a person who usually prefers atmosphere to gore in her horror, but I'd be remiss in not mentioning it. So if you're faint of stomach, go elsewhere. I mean, what part of tapeworm zombie novel was unclear?

For the rest of you: Sit down, strap in, and prepare to be put off undercooked pork for the rest of your life.

The Troop, by Nick Cutter, is disturbing, gruesome, shocking and I enjoyed it! I relish a good horror novel and this story was so realistically frightening it scared me!
A Scoutmaster takes five teenage boy scouts on their annual wilderness survival weekend to a small, remote island off the coast of Prince Edward Island. A hungry visitor, who is infected with parasitic worms, arrives in the dead of the night. Let The Fun Begin!
My morbid fascination with suspenseful creepy reads was satisfied as my eyes were glued to the pages.
Huge Ick factor so please don't read while trying to enjoy a meal.
Very well-written Old School Horror at its best!

WOW. This is a mess. I purchased this one because the premise seemed interesting and the reviews were stellar. Once I started reading it, and realized just how bad it was, I went back and revisited the reviews. And, again, I allowed myself to fall pray to the four and five star reviews of the "freebots". This is what I have started calling readers who give "out of this world" rave reviews just because they received the free ARC and hope posting ridiculously lame/misleading reviews, will get them more freebies. What a disservice to other readers who check out your reviews.
I wasn't impressed with the style of writing. I found it slow and monotonous.
I wasn't impressed with the character development.
I wasn't impressed. Period.

So I didn't love this book, I'm a huge horror fan and this really didn't cut it for me. I would give it a 2 stars but it did have its entertaining moments. I feel this books would have been a lot better if it was around 300 pages instead of 500 and just got to the point and the horror and didn't add all the filler in between!

The author pens "The Troop" in a plot filled with horror....full on horror! His story line was unique with great imagination, solid and with great characters that I could connect with an root for them in their perils. This is one book that really kept me turning the pages and yes I did sleep with the lights on that night...a very very rare thing. I totally enjoyed the book and have one word of caution... if you are sensitive to any type of animal abuse, please be aware that it's in here and in detail. Highly recommended for all horror fans!

This review is based on a complimentary copy from the author which was provided for an honest review.

I read this book a couple months ago and am still thinking about it. The story focuses a troops of boys going on a trip to an island with their Leader. Something horrible has now been unleashed on the island and now everyone is in danger. This story is certainly not for the squeamish. I have a strong stomach and there were a few times I had to put the book down and take a few deep breaths before continuing on again. I would suggest it for those who are interested in horror. I don't know if I would re-read it again (because of a few highly gross scenes) but the book story was extremely interesting and I couldn't put it down. This book will not be easily forgotten.

The Troop by Nick Cutter is a horror book that mixes a Lord of the Flies scenario with a contagion scenario. It starts off interestingly enough with a boy scout troop heading for a camping excursion to an isolated island off the coast of Canada. Disaster is unknowingly headed their way in the form of a dangerously infected man.

The first hundred pages or so is spent largely getting to know the boys in the troop and waiting for disaster to literally wash up on the shore of their island. It’s largely successful in getting to know the boys and developing a certain amount of suspense and dread. Unfortunately, the character development pretty much stops there and the rest of the novel descends into gross outs and cruelty rather than suspense or horror. The boys settle into sort of cookie-cut out characters. A Breakfast Club for horror. The nerd, the athlete, the angry kid, the pyschopath, etc.

The infection or contagion brought to the island is at first interesting, but becomes less frightening and more disgusting as the book goes on. A similar sort of fright was recently done much better by Seanan McGuire (as Mira Grant) in Parasite. Cutter goes over the top here and creates revulsion rather than fear.

Flash forwards that cover the investigation after the fact and show both how the contagion (for lack of a better term to avoid spoilers) was created and how life in the hometown of the boys changes after the incident are well done. They are in fact, far more interesting than the events on the island. Unfortunately, they are confined to a few pages in between chapters. If the story were reversed, with the events on the island told briefly through flashbacks, I believe the book would have been far more interesting and more frightening.

The Troop aims for terror but settles for disgusting. I would not have bothered finishing if I hadn’t agreed to review it. I’ll give it credit for an interesting beginning, but it’s all downhill from there. There are far better reads out there than this one. Not recommended.

I received an advance copy of this book.

Creepy as hell! This is how I would describe this one!! A simple camping trip with a few kids and a leader, turns into the worst nightmare of their lives. This creep, they crawl, they slither into your mind and do not let you go! This book had some excellent passages in it and some great scenes. Very unbelievable, but it really captures you, that is what is so fun about reading this genre. Nick Cutter did an awesome job taking the reader down a path, that most would shudder the thought of returning to! Excellent novel, by a great author.

Fact One: a boat had arrived.

Fact Two: he and the boys were on an isolated island over an hour from home. No weapons other than their knives – blades no longer than three and a half inches, as outlined in the Scout Handbook – and a flare gun. It was night. They were alone.

###

It was supposed to be a last hurrah for the boys of Troop Fifty-Two.

At fourteen years old, the guys – Kent, Ephraim, Max, Shelley, and Newton – had come up together through Beavers, Cubs, Scouts, and Venturers, but most (save for the ever-nerdy Newt) now felt that they were too old to be running around in the wilderness, earning merit badges for activities as dorky as bird watching and first aid. And so the late-autumn camping trip to Falstaff Island was to be their final adventure together, much to Scoutmaster Tim’s disappointment.

Their peace and quiet is interrupted on the very first night, with the unexpected arrival of an emaciated and ravenous stranger in a speed boat. While Tim attempts to treat the obviously ill man (in his other life, the Scoutmaster is a GP), there’s no cure for what ills him. “Typhoid Tom,” as he’d later come to be known in the papers, is Patient Zero in an experiment gone horribly wrong…or horribly right, depending on which project backer you’re talking to.

Ostensibly, Dr. Edgerton’s goal was to create a specialized tapeworm that dieters could ingest at will, harboring the parasites in their bodies only until their target weight is reached – at which time an antibiotic would handily flush the unwanted critters from their host’s system. Instead his experiments yielded a biological weapon – “the most adaptable and survivable parasite known to mankind.”

Edgerton’s genetically modified hydatids eat their hosts from the inside out: fat, muscle, organs, skin, eyeballs. While the (many) devourer worms consume their victims, the lone conqueror worm wiggles its way into the host’s brainstem, both cranking the host’s appetite into overdrive and lulling him into complacency. Once all of the host’s tasty bits have been consumed, the worms go looking for a new victim. Carried on the air, in the water, and in bodily fluids, the worms are highly contagious. Survivors. Gross, slimy, squiggly survivors.

And in just a few days, they will have eaten their way through all but one of the island’s human visitors. (Not to mention many of the animal inhabitants as well.)

Though I’d never hear of Nick Cutter before, Stephen King’s blurb (“THE TROOP scared the hell out of me, and I couldn’t put it down. This is old-school horror at its best.” ) sold me on THE TROOP. (And, let’s face it, the temporary price reduction to just $1.99 didn’t hurt either.) As a middle schooler, I used to spend my summer vacations melting into the red velvet chair in the sun porch, devouring novels by Stephen King and John Saul – some borrowed from the library, others pilfered from my father’s personal stash. Before I knew it, the calendar read September and my to-read pile, seemingly insurmountable in June, was down to just a few books. I don’t spend a whole lot of time on horror anymore, but THE TROOP sure made me feel like I was twelve and on an eternal summer vacation again. It’s a pretty excellent summer read…if you like your S’mores with a chaser of super-gory ghost stories.

THE TROOP is reminiscent of vintage Stephen King – and in fact, Cutter tips his hat to King in the author’s notes: he credits CARRIE for inspiring him to add “extra” material to help flesh out the story. The news reports, lab notes, and transcripts from Congressional inquiries are a nice touch.

That said, I found much of the story more gross-scary than suspenseful-scary, since it’s clear fairly early on that everyone is destined for the feeding trough save for one of the boys.

Most of the characters (except for Newt and *maybe* Max) are rather unlikable, though I suspect that this is largely intentional: you actually root for certain people to become infected and *die already*. Kent is a pompous, self-righteous bully, just like his pompous, self-righteous bully of a cop father; Ephraim is a hothead and masochist; and Shelley is a sociopath in training. (He delights in maiming, torturing, and killing animals, and by the end of the book he has moved on to humans. I’d add a spoiler alert, but really it shouldn’t come as any shock.)

Even the well-meaning Scoutmaster Tim is rather annoying, what with his total clueless about the boys under his charge. You’d think that, in all the time he spent with them, he’d notice how they all gang up on poor Newt, or the gleam in Shelley’s eyes while discussing how to best gut a fish or trap an unsuspecting raccoon. (They give merit badges in animal exploitation, right?)

Though I have a pretty strong stomach, I found myself skimming and then skipping the scenes of animal torture. (It starts with insects, and then moves on to cats and momma turtles.) Most people have a line, and that’s usually where I draw mine. That’s not to say that the violence is senseless: in Shelley, it’s meant to denote his moral bankruptcy and complete lack of a conscience, where it does the opposite with Newt and Max – the two feel so sick over their bungled slaughter of a turtle that, once she finally draws her dying breath, they bury her rather than consume her (much-needed) flesh as intended. Dr. Edgerton’s lab notes from his animal trials are pretty horrifying as well.

File under: Things that make you go “EWWWWWWWWWW!”

The Troop is one nasty book.

It's not a pleasant read. You can admire the impressive prose, but any visuals it conjures up in your mind you'd probably rather be without. The Troop is dark and disgusting and mean. It wants to scare you but more than that I think it means to make you ill.

. . . And I could not put it down.

At the center of the story is a tightly knit group of boy scouts. They’re joined by their Scoutmaster on a lonely, deserted island as they try to earn their final badges. All the fun stops when an incredibly thin man with a ravenous hunger comes to their cabin looking for food. The man is infected. Something awful resides within him and it wants out. . .

A lot of people say it's a kind of mash-up of The Ruins and Lord of the Flies. I get that. I was also reminded of an early X-Files episode set in a prison during a contagion event. So, yeah, The Troop has some close relatives out there. Despite this, I quite liked the book because of some damn fine writing, fully realized characters, and a horror so awful it almost boggles the mind.

It's a great read and one that pulls no punches. Indeed, I almost rather wish it had once or twice, particularly when dealing with the deaths of animals (there is some violence towards animals in the book which I did not appreciate. What can I say? I’m an animal lover and I found these parts more disturbing than I’d like). At times, I felt like the author's intent to disturb us went beyond, making something that was not just gross and frightening, but also upsetting. A mark of effective horror? Well, yes. But it also makes the book difficult to recommend. A certain sort of reader may be required. . . Do you enjoy horror stories where a hero presents himself and saves the day before things get too bad and the survivors manage to go back to their lives, happy, contented, and wiser than before? This ain't that. This is brutal, grim, old-school horror, where things can ALWAYS get worse and you know there will be no happy ending after reading just the first 30 pages. If that sounds like your cup of tea, I say give The Troop a try.

Despite some objections to certain parts of the book, I thought it was really quite good. Liked it a lot. Relentless, frightening, and tragic. I look forward to the author's next work of horror.

A group of teenage boy scouts led by their mentor come to an abandoned island located off the coast of Canada for the weekend to do what Scouts usually do: set fires, navigate the terrain, telling each other stories and generally comprehend the lessons of survival in the wilderness. Scouts do not take with them any mobile devices, but because of the threat of the storm ahead Scoutmaster takes one radio, in case they’ll need to contact with the mainland. Two days later, a a boat is to take the troop from the island to the mainland. The troop has no boat, they are completely cut off from the mainland.

The troop is led by Tim Riggs, a former military doctor who knows his scouts almost from the cradle. Teens respect Tim, although it is obvious that their Scoutmaster is not macho, he’s quite an ordinary man, and even his leadership abilities are overrated. Riggs and five teenagers, Kent, Shelly, Newton, Ephraim, Max, stay in the house, where previously were imported products and other necessary items.

First night on the island scouts already have gone to bed in a cabin when Riggs notices how a boat closes to the island. A man gets out of the boat, goes to the house and asks Tim for food. In the dark Riggs looks at the stranger and notices that he is incredibly thin. Not daring to refuse a stranger, Tim gives him food and allowes to sleep in the house, after closing the door of the room where the scouts sleep. The stranger wakes everyone at night, smashing the radio to the floor. Tim calms the stranger down and examines him better. The man is a bag of bones, so thin people just can’t be. Under the skin of the stranger Tim notices movement, as if someone creeps under.

Sometimes it all comes down to a cliche. There is a book, built entirely on a pattern. We accept this pattern as something self-evident. And then everything depends on the writer: how well he will be able to decorate a cliché, how he can genetically modify a pattern.

The Troop is a fairly typical horror, almost adjacent to the subgenre "zombie horror." There is a virus that causes a person to eat everything in his path and the carrier of the virus itself almost becomes a skeleton, so he loses muscle tissue on the body. Infection can be passed, and, as in the case of zombies, getting quite a small amount of tissue from an infected person is enough to get sick infected. Nick Cutter varies a tired zombie scheme so that the action of the novel takes place not on the large territory as it usually happens, but on a strictly confined space. Cut off from the world, five Scouts will have to fight for their life not with a zombie invasion, but between themselves.

Impermeability gives the author to forget tricks of fighting with flesh-eaters and focus on psychology. Cutter gradually reveals the nature of each scout, throwing into the novel a fair amount of flashbacks. And not without a cliché: a boy who has an anger management problem, the second scout is such fat geek, dreaming of a normal life, the third is a sadistic psychopath. The idea of a sociopath in the world full of zombies is also not new, though not so common. But the character of Shelley helps to better reveal the nature of cruelty, enthusiasm to violence among children.

The book doesn’t offer plot twists on every page, but you can not say that everything is predictable. Suspence keeps up to the finale, and it may seem obvious, what happens in the finale, the important here is not the "what" but "how" and "why."

Gradual unfolding mystery of the escape of the experimental patient and secret experiment using documentary pieces can be called successful. Cutter does not lay the blame on anyone for what happened. Fragments of transcripts from the tribunal, record experiments, magazine articles give the book the effect "based on real events."

The Troop does not open new lands, but it is above average in the category of horror. And yes: it’s a novel for adults rather than for teenagers, because of the abundance of foul language and some scenes with blood and guts.

This was truly a scary book! It’s definitely science fiction/fantasy, thriller and probably could easily be placed in horror, too. Warning: you might not want to read this late at night before you go to sleep. I don’t often read books of this type, but this was a good one. Stephen King said it scared him, so that should tell you something.

Five fourteen-year-old boy scouts go off on a camping trip with their scout leader on a deserted island not too far away from home for the weekend – something they do every year. Only this year is different. A stranger wanders into their camp, extremely gaunt, and hungry, VERY hungry.

Nick Cutter delves into the psyche of each of the five campers as they experience the terror of the weekend experience. For some of the boys, their “darker” side comes out and for others, their stronger, more courageous emerges.

The sickness that the stranger has brought is so contagious that merely touching him can pass on the infection. But this is an infection like no other. Bio-engineered in a laboratory, this contagion is not a virus, but something supposedly created as a weight-loss aid. In reality it is much more sinister than that, and incredibly deadly.

This novel was very gripping. I had to keep reading to find out what happened to each of the boys. It is a rather dark novel, so it isn’t one for those who like a happily-ever-after ending. There is a fair amount of coarse language in it which I didn’t think necessarily added anything to the book, so you’ll have to skip over those words if you don’t like reading that kind of thing. I thought the book was fascinating and worth reading enough to do that.

I did like the style that Mr. Cutter used to provide the reader information that the main protagonists don’t have (newspaper reports, reports from investigations after the incident etc.). I also liked the way the author wrapped things up at the end of the book after the return to the mainland (I won’t say more than that for fear of spoiling things for those who haven’t read the book).

This was a horrifyingly fascinating novel. I gave it four out of five stars. Thriller and horror readers will love it.

Thank you to the publisher, Gallery Books, via NetGalley who provided an advance reader copy in exchange for a fair and honest review. A positive opinion was not required. All thoughts are my own.

Disturbing in it's content, disturbing characters. One reviewer said stereotypes. With all media we read and watch it is for our entertainment. Must we always pick apart every little item that does not satisfy? Yes there will be inconsistencies, yes there will be some stereotyped characters. Read these books for what they actually are. Entertainment, escapism. This book is well written, scary and again disturbing and sad at times. If you want accurate, real content in your entertainment read a history book and stay away from horror.

Really amateurish prose style. This reads like an 8th grade jock wrote it. Terrible flow, repetitive word choices, and a very annoying habit of pointless flashbacks to the kids' childhoods that due to his extremely limited writing abilities fails to flesh out his characters at all, so the call backs become annoying and pointless. If your reading level is about on par with the Clifford the big red dog books, you might be able to enjoy this. If you read above a middle school level, avoid it. It's terrible by every metric.

This novel is entertaining at most, but i found myself wanting to get it over with. I also feel it was inspired by The Strain by Guillermi Del Toro, almost unoriginal.

I am 24 and have done my share of reading dean koonts and stephen king. I feel that this novel was a bit below my age group but despite that it was an entertaining read. It was an easy read and the unfolding of the story was pretty intense.

I only say this because I read it. So many times i wanted to quit reading it because I wasnt feeling much of a connection with the characters (even though the character development was pretty deep). Maybe others may have a different opinion. WHAT REALLY BOTHERED ME THOUGH is the similarities of the antagonist to that in The Strain.

SPOILERS:
The worms are very similar to that in The strain and they infect the same way. I dont know if this is major coincidence, but tmThe Strain came first. I felt as if i was reading a side story to The Strain but less entertaining. Granted, The Troop doesnt have the whole devil/vampire twist, it was still annoying.

My final words are that this book may be enjoyable for older teens and young adults who are looking for a creepy novel. If you were seeking a deeper and intricate piece of horror literature, this may not be a good choice.

Either way, a good read always beats a movie. It never hurts to read. Happy Reading!

The Troop by Nick Cutter can be read in two ways. It can be read as a work of fiction, as advertised, and reviewed as a good read with well-developed characters and a good plot line. If it is read this way the reader can finish the book, put it down and say, “That was a good read”.
Or it can be read as a prophecy—a look into a possible future—in which an amoral scientist experiments with a simple worm that is genetically altered and the face of the earth is changed forever.
The Troop is so gripping because it could happen. That is why it is a good thriller.
The story opens with Scoutmaster Tim Riggs taking his scout troop to a deserted island for their annual camping trip. This is usually the time when the scouts have an opportunity to earn some badges in orienteering and survival skills. The arrival of an emaciated stranger on the island during the night changes the camping trip into a battle for survival where the last thing on their minds is a badge
As the story unfolds we are given details about the stranger, the experiment and a mini- biography of each one of the boys on the trip. We are left to ask who will survive and at the same time hoping that one of the scouts will not survive.
In this book published by Simon and Schuster Nick Cutter succeeds in writing a story that will change the way we view camping trips.
I received a galley of this book through Net galley.com with the understanding that I would read and review it. This was no explicit or implicit demand that I write a favorable review. In this case there was no need to ask that. I truly like the book.

The Troop by Nick Cutter scared me half to death at least twice! It's also responsible for keeping me awake reading very late last night with way too many the lights on. The Troop was impossible to put down, a deeply haunting mix of Cabin Fever and Lord of the Flies. There's no way I'm ever looking at a worm the same again. Ever. Warning: Not for the faint of heart, but highly recommended for everyone else!

My rating: I have chosen not to rate this book. Please note due to the store's policy of having to apply a numerical rating to a book, this is why I gave the book that rating ON the store ONLY!

My opinion: I read The Troop as an ARC from the publisher. I am a fan of horror, but couldn't figure out why I didn't like this book. As hard as I tried, I simply couldn't put my finger on it. It wasn't that the book was poorly written. In fact, this book is very well written. To give it a fair review, I decided to wait until it came out in print. When I was able, I grabbed the book to skim it and it became very clear to me why it didn't tickle my fancy.

This book reminded me of Dean Koontz' Moonlight Bay series. It was along the same lines...a biological/military experiment thriller run amok. While I read both the books in the series, I rated them 2/3 stars. I love thrillers, but more thrillers of killers and things that go bump in the night. The sci-fi thrillers technically don't do anything for me. It dawned on me that I felt the same way after finishing this book.

This book is not for the weak or faint of heart readers. It is pretty graphic, particularly with some pretty gross scenes. Shockingly, that didn't seem to bother me, but I do like to give warning.

Source: Publisher for review

Would I recommend? : I have to several people, including my husband.

Stand Alone or Part of a Series: Stand Alone

So, I’d picked up a free copy of this one somewhere and just sort of added it to the pile, not really thinking about it, figuring I’d get to it eventually but no rush, unfamiliar author and all. Then I started seeing rave review posts from friends and was all, “wait, that looks familiar.”

*headsmack* And to think, I could have read this WEEKS ago!

Plotwise, it’s basic enough – a Patient Zero test subject goes on the run, and tries to hide out on a remote, normally uninhabited island. Normally uninhabited. Bad luck for the Scoutmaster and the boys of Troop 52, who’ve just arrived for a nature hike weekend.

All Scoutmaster Tim, who’s also a doctor, knows when he finds the stranger is that the man’s obviously sick. Feverish, thin, and hungry. Just so very, very hungry. Hungry enough to be eating dirt. Tim wants to help, but also doesn’t want to endanger his troop.

Then things, already going wrong, get worse. The radio gets damaged, the boat’s not working, there’s no way to reach or contact the mainland. And the stranger is not just sick. He’s contagious with a horror the likes of which nobody’s ever seen.

Soon, the five boys realize they might be on their own. Their previous social hierarchy breaks down fast, neatly-done interludes flesh out their various personalities (as well as giving hellish peeks into the creation of the contagion, and the military quarantine response). Really, any sort of accident or disaster stranding them would have seen them slide into Lord of the Flies territory in a hurry; the added elements of infection and paranoia only heighten the tension.

Goes to show ya, folks. Pay attention. That book you’ve been putting off, thinking it might do when you’ve got nothing else to read, you could be doing yourself a real disservice.

Everything they’ve been saying about The Troop is true. It’s mindblowingly good, impossible to put down, great from the get-go. The writing is phenomenal, the sort of wordsmithing skill that made me instantly bump Nick Cutter to my mental list of will-read-anything-by!

The Troop is make you queasy horror. It doesn't scare you with jump scares or evil clowns. It does worse than that. It makes you feel sick, pit of your stomach, I think I need to sit by the toilet sick. Don't read this after a good meal, or during a meal, or while thinking about eating a meal.

Book gifted to me. The previous review "March 21, 2014 By Steph DeFerie" probably sums it up best: Stephen King's "Dreamcatcher" meets the film 2006 'Slither'. Plus, some of Cutter's action writing is unrefined, I'd frequently think, "wait, how did you get from there to here so fast?" Like page 80 in the softcover book, the troop ends up scaling on this harrowing shale cliff over the ocean having angry/fatalistic thoughts, then almost suddenly the leader is helping them to the other side....huh? Yet the gore and traumatizing thoughts of (most of) the dying victims, & animal cruelty are far more embellished by the 'acclaimed' Cutter...depressing.

This book starts fantastically, then treads water till the end. The beginning is amazing, a carefully constructed enigma that slowly reveals its awful horror to fantastic effect. But once the secret is out, the author has nowhere else to go with his rich premise, continually recycling the same ideas and imagery over and over again up and through a weak finale.

The plot is solid but almost embarrassingly simple, more akin to a short. It is rare to encounter a book with such a straightforward story these days, where most genre writing feels compelled to include some sort of big surprises and twists along the way and/or an epic confrontation and showdown to cap the thing off. The writer’s attempts to twist the narrative into some larger coming-of-age statement also fall short, as the depth and humanity of the characters never really rings so worthwhile.

This book is also extremely gory, heavily involved with disease, suffering and all levels of gruesome body horror. I can confess I normally abhor that type of story, but found the author’s skillful language and plotting good enough to endure the redundant descriptions of nauseous smells and vile deformations.

This book is 5-stars for its first third, which ends in one of the most terrifying and suspenseful scenes ever. But despite its solid prose, the story falls into a limp, 3-star rut through its stale ending.

Wonderfully icky, almost from the get go. A bit of Cabin Fever mixed with The Ruins told in the echoing format of Carrie, with breaks that fill in the reader kind of being the only "slow point" in the narrative. Totally unnecessary as well since unlike in Carrie these journalistic court hearings and interviews were information dumping taken to extremes. Sometimes the unknown, not knowing what has befallen these characters, is scarier. But that's quibbling, and the author knows how to instill fear and build horrible situations that have no possible outcome that is good or kind. Placing children in jeopardy is a touchy thing, especially in horror where death and torture and mangling of the body, what grows within in this case, creeps into the narrative. I do not want to read about children being placed in horrific situations, but I read The Troop. It's The Ruins with children instead of young adults, and I dreaded every moment reading it---and that's a good thing because horror is plain and raw and terrifying and extremely sad. Depressing? Possibly, but you'll not forget The Troop after you finish reading it. I haven't. I received a copy from NetGalley too long ago now. My opinion is, of course, biased.

Wow. Ok, so I don't do horror books. I don't like them. I have seen enough to give myself nightmares at night, I don't need to read books to create new nightmares. So when I was provided a free copy of this book for my review I didn't think I'd even finish it honestly. But then I started it, and that was it. I could not put it down. It was like looking at a horrific car crash or something you know will give you nightmares, but you still can't look away. I could not stop reading. And then I was already going to have the nightmares so I just had to finish it to see who survived, if anyone and how they did it, and how they got rid of the nightmare! The story was riveting and I would tell myself just one more chapter, but I could never stop there.
I liked the small excerpts about scientists journals, the interviews, the change of point of view throughout. It really hooked me and at one point, I really thought how it would end because I thought something was given away, but it wasn't. The action is really what drove me through this one.
The characters were not my favorite. There was something about each one of them that kind of bugged me, but I'm not a teenage boy, so I probably could never identify with any of them. Because of this, I wasn't heart broken as the story progressed, but it was pretty disturbing since you wouldn't want anyone to experience what they did. I thought Shelley was a little over the edge. He was full bent sociopath right there. All the tendencies. Part of me felt that he was too much. That it should just be normal typical teenage boys, but then if Shelley wan't who he was, the story would've ended differently, wouldn't it? There was some really disturbing descriptions about him abusing and murdering animals. There's some experimenting and torturing of animals. If you can't do animals suffering, I would steer clear of this book. I had to skip a scene or two because it was just too detailed.
Aside from that there is a lot of language and just some very creepy disturbing scenes. I wouldn't recommend this for kids. But if you are a horror lover, I would definitely recommend this. It's incredibly disturbing, but certainly draws you in and holds you tight for the ride.

If you want to openly gasp and cringe in front of strangers, read this book on the subway. I had been looking for contemporary, traditional horror that didn't feel like it verged on the side of cartoonish, and I'm glad that I found this. The Troop is a creeping, disturbing book about a boy scout troop that goes to do boy scout things on an uninhabited island. What could go wrong, right? Well, let me tell you. Someone else shows up. Someone who is very, very hungry. Are you interested yet?

This visitor shakes up the previously solid dynamic between Scoutmaster Tim and the five young teen boys in the troop. Something is wrong with the intruder, and nobody is sure what to do about it. Even the adult. And that's where the problem lies for the boys. Tim accidentally exposes them to the bioengineered monstrosity inside of the starving stranger, putting all of them in grave danger. Each of the characters are trying desperately to survive when they realize they're not getting off of the island any time soon, and some are driven to horrifying extremes.

The book switches back and forth between what's happening on the island and various articles/reports/interviews before and after about the thing that has made it to the island. I thought the latter was intriguing, but could have been fleshed out a little more. I most enjoyed the Lord of the Flies-esque tensions between the young boys when they were out on the island on their own, because all of the characters were thought out pretty well and interesting to learn about. Though a few of them (the jock, the nerd) had more stereotypical stories, their personalities still felt fresh and it was fun to see them interact with each other. When and how certain characters cracked kept me from putting this book down. There is some incredibly devious manipulation that goes down that had me nearly covering my eyes and squeaking (making it much harder to read).

The bioengineered worm (as they soon find out) takes its victims fully, sucking all of the life out of them, eating voraciously for them, as well as infecting the brain and telling them how to think. The hunger that consumes the infected characters lead them to eat anything and everything, while they waste away as the host. And it is very easy to get infected. The worm overtaking various characters was gruesome and monstrous, but it never felt like it was being gory just for the sake of being gory. The descriptions left me squirming and feeling sort of...itchy. And maybe a little...hungry.

This is a horrifying story of survival that kept me reading to see who was going to make it out alive, and at what cost.

The Troop by Nick Cutter

Scoutmaster Tim and his scouts of Troop 52 relish their yearly trip coinciding with the pioneering badge. Falstaff Island, a government-owned dwelling that hosts as an emergency shelter, as well as home to marine and insect life, has been chosen for this years site. Absent of full-time human occupation it is the perfect location for the five boys last hurrah, as they are getting older and ready to exit the Scout life. Once settled in, the arrival of an unidentified man with abnormal physical attributes is in obvious need of medical attention. An unusual sickness radiates from the stranger as the young men notice the devastation of his body. Not knowing that secret agencies were pursuing, sanctuary and medical treatment are given to the foreigner. Forced to perform a minor procedure, a disturbing discovery is made. A white thick tube inside the mans stomach begins flexing, constricting and eventually emerging from the body to morph itself into something appalling that couldn't be identified. As the horror unfolds before the onlookers a disease begins to spread. What begins as a routine three day camping trip now becomes a horrifying extreme need for survival for each individual. As the Scout handbook says : always be prepared.
Nick Cutter paints a terrifying picture by using his main characters as a brush in his novel The Troop. With a limited amount of people on a confined isle, the tone is a bit claustrophobic, as is the fear of the unknown. Moments of transformations become pure horror and will cause unavoidable queasiness for the reader. These transmutations are directly related to worms, the oldest species on earth that become nightmare houseguests within the human body. With the ability to lay eggs in their own skin and detachable segments, the worm is capable of having endless self-creation. The concept of human kind attempting to save others they love and care about only to acquire the contagious infection themselves, become a social obstacle that the inhabitants must conquer. From the mind deteriorating to physical strength no longer existing, the progression of the metamorphosis is described with a ghastly edge and a chilling flair. It's a pleasure to know Nick Cutter is not only a obviously talented author in the horror field, he is also a self proclaimed fan of the genre.

Make no mistake: this book is disgusting. Absolutely. And anytime the "King" of horror recommends a book based on its ability to frighten – expect the grotesque. Once you've bought it, you’re in; you've signed up for the ride there is no getting off. However – and a big however – there is great storytelling here; beautiful (point-of-view) writings of the vulnerable and fragile adolescent mind, which was so good. Like 'Catcher In The Rye'-kinda good. Highly recommended; (at least for those who don’t vomit at the sight and smell of someone else’s, nor faint at the sight of blood – and tremendous amounts of it). Scenes of serious, 'go for the kill' literature (reminded me of THE RUINS, by Scott Smith, read that too if you haven't).

A lot of the violence and cruelty in "The Troop," especially toward animals, served to trigger shock and repulsion in this reader. And I bet I'm not alone. Most, of it does little to advance the plot.

I should note that violence and horror in general, don't freak me. For instance I love most of Stephen King's books.

Cutter did a better than average job of character development.

I liked the description of the biological monster. That really is a dangerous concept.

There were some occasional nice touches of humor. Funny to read that the monster was partially developed as a "weight loss" idea.

Still, I would be reluctant to buy another of Cutter's books until I was sure that 95% of the gross, gratuitous cruelty had been edited out.

I have officially read the best book of 2014 thus far, and it is THE TROOP by Nick Cutter! The book is only 350+ pages in length, but I tore through it in two days…it is that good! The author, Nick Cutter, is actually a pseudonym of Canadian writer Craig Davidson. But regardless of what name he uses, the man can definitely write terror and write it well!

I love this book for many reasons. The story is great, the voice is unique, and the characters are vibrant and alive. Not to mention it has some excellent gory descriptions and truly horrifying concepts. You really can’t ask for more in a horror novel.

THE TROOP is written well and moves at a nice pace. I never once felt the narrative was bogged down, nor did I ever feel it was rushed. The prose is carefully constructed and flows nicely as the story moves along.

The characterizations are spot on, and I found a nice level of believability in each one. Cutter turns the conventional stereotypes of young boys on their ears and instead gives us realistic youngsters that could very well live next door. As a result, the reader actually cares for their well-being and is therefore actually disturbed when bad things start to happen to them.

But the story…oh, the story itself is the real winner here. THE TROOP is a horrifying tale that could be ripped from today’s headlines. And it showcases the harsh realities that science can and will inflict upon society from time to time. The book is also a warning, as it gives a dark example of what mankind’s pursuit of perfection might one day bring about.

THE TROOP is a massive win for me, and I am proclaiming it to be the best book I’ve read in 2014 so far. If Cutter or Davidson or whatever name he chooses to use can keep producing this kind of intensity, I will be a lifelong fan of his work. Whatever you are reading now, put it down and go pick up a copy of THE TROOP; I will wager you will be thankful you did.

I received this book free in exchange for a review from Net Galley.

Wow, where to start with a review for this book. The story starts out innocently enough with a scout troop of five teenage boys and their scoutmaster who go on an overnight on an isolated island. They are there to work on their merit badges.

Good character development ensues when you read about the boys' likes, dislikes, fears and concerns as told in essay form written by the boys. Or as told as a memory that the boy is bringing back.

The first night after being dropped off, the scoutmaster is alarmed when a boat comes to the island. He meets the man who is in the boat and is instantly afraid. Unbeknownst to the scoutmaster, the man is a runaway from a science experiment gone horribly wrong. The writer shares a technique used by Stephen King in "Carrie" using clippings of newspaper articles, trial transcripts and other means to let the reader know all of this and how the man came to be on the island.

This technique is used throughout the story to help the reader know what is actually going on, since the people on the islander are not aware of any facts.

The story, while VERY gruesome and repelling is some parts (I had to skip some pages) is told in a very believable manner. The thoughts of one particular scout who likes to kill animals and watch them die slowly makes you wonder about the author. Hopefully, he did a lot of research to attain this goal.

The overall story and the complete loss of innocence by these boys is written in such a way that just keeps you reading and wanting more. A very well written story that I would recommend if you can get through the gruesomeness. It's definitely not for the queasy.

The Troop is an interesting piece of literature. It reaches some poignant and wonderful moments between people, their environment and their existence and at the same time it takes a total plunge into the grossest, nastiest basic survival warfare on levels most people wouldn't imagine. I'm not talking aliens from somewhere far away but predators that are all ready here, first to rule and last to leave this planet.

I enjoy stories such as this one, the ones that make me wonder what the characters are up to, walking to get breakfast on a cloudy Friday morning was made brighter by my thoughts of Max and other boys who went on a fun trip with their scoutmaster Tim into an isolated island on a regular troop outing. Unknown to them a danger has spreads it's dark wings upon their island either by chance or by accident...regardless their lives will never be the same and if anything some of them probably wished that they never existed once the nature gets real out there. Brisk, fun and sometimes bleak, it wasn't the deepest book but it caught my interest and it was entertaining, reading it with friends was even better.

- Kasia S.

MY REVIEW:
Pocket|February 25, 2014|Trade Paperback|ISBN: 978-1-4767-6737-6
Once a 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 bonfire. But when an unexpected intruder stumbles upon their campsite - shockingly thin, disturbingly pale, and voraciously hungry - Tim and the boys are exposed to something far more frightening than any tale of terror. The human carrier of a bioengineered nightmare. A horror that spreads faster than fear. A harrowing struggle for survival with no escape from the elements, the infected...or one another.
Whoa! This was a page-turner and a story that was certainly written for teens. It's a great book for adults as well but teenagers would especially appreciate this brand of novel for sure. All you teens out there who don't like to read, pick this one up and give it a go, I think you'll be very happy that you did and it might just get you interested in scoping out other similar novels. Very well-written. Intense and fast-moving.

After this book I don't think I will ever be able to look at a worm again with the same sense of innocence. Instead I will be plagued by visual images induced by the creatures in this story.
It has every element a horror story needs to supply the reader with a multitude of emotions, everything from anger, disgust, horror, pity and fear.
Even at the age of fourteen the boys are already set in their temperaments and personalities. They are on the cusp of adulthood and developing their stag antlers and asserting their rank in the pack. In these kind of desperate situations the true strengths and weaknesses become more evident. However that also means the more disturbing character traits also rise to the surface. This is the case when it comes to one of the boys, who not only wants to hurt and kill others, he actually derives pleasure from the mad situation and uses it to his own sick advantage.
Simultaneously the creation of this creature as a possible bio-weapon that causes contamination, murder and mayhem on a global scale is a scary scenario, especially when you consider the reaction of the powers that be to such a threat. They would without a doubt cut their losses and take a few lives to save many. Kind of bad news for the people stuck with the infected.
On the island a game of cat and mouse ensues between the boys, despite the fact they are also in danger of becoming breeding grounds for the worms.
It was a great read, a wee bit creepy mind you.
I received a copy of this book via NetGalley.

Troop leader Dr. Tim Riggs takes his group of boy scouts to an isolated island. With no way to get off the island until Sunday morning, Riggs tucks his kids in and decides to sit on the porch for a bit before turning in. A stranger approaches and right away Riggs knows there is something off with this guy but to keep his kids safe he invites him in hoping to help him. What happens next will terrify and disgust the reader.

The Troop is told from many viewpoints giving the reader an inside look into the fallout of a bio-engineered nightmare that ensues on the island. The five boys, all 14, are a bit stereotypical but only adds to the story. Kent, the jock and obvious leader of the group and Newton is the exact opposite with being overweight and a mama’s boy. Max is the middle man and always looking to help anyone out and Ephraim is a ticking time bomb at times. Rounding the group out is Shelley who is unusual and harder to put a finger on why he is so different. Together this group is dynamic and with the infection raging these personalities became heightened.

With the alternating telling of the events on the island and what happens off the island via government research notes, recordings and witness statements, the reader is privy to all aspects of this infections and the results of their experiment.

This is truly a horror novel and will have your stomach turning and wishing you could close your eyes. Squirm worthy and a must for anyone that loves the horror genre.

'The Troop' is Lord of the Flies meets Alien. Five boy scouts and their leader have set up camp on Falstaff Island for a weekend of camping and hunting. When a mysterious stranger stumbles onto the island, sick and impossibly thin, he is given sanctuary in their small cabin. It's only then, as the man sleeps and a storm rages outside, do they notice the mans swollen belly... and the way it seems to move.

I thought I knew where this book was going for much of it, but a second act twist surprised me. Not only did the boys have to protect themselves from the evil hungrily pursuing them, but they soon had to protect themselves from each other. Though entirely possible, this new twist seemed a little ridiculous to me. The author was trying too hard to make the story more scary.

The story deteriorated towards the end and ended nowhere.

A nasty little worm shows up and wreaks some major havoc during an annual camping trip for five boy scouts and their leader. F’n worms.

A very well written and bloody, horror romp in the woods. I enjoyed everything about this one. The characters were interesting and well drawn, even though a wee clichéd. It moved quickly and the formatting worked very well with the writing style. There was a lot of action and no shortage of creepy scary moments either. 4.5+ Stars. Highly Recommended.

I am a bit shocked. I wish I would have read the reviews before I read this mess.

I was not frightened by this book. I wanted a scary read not a gross read. It was just outright disgusting. I love Stephen Kings books but this is not comparable. The section describing the torture of a kitten is just too much for me. I've read some seriously disturbing gory reads but animal cruelty ruins it for me. If I would have known about it beforehand, I would not have bought this book. It's the one thing I will not tolerate when reading.

Another issue I had was that I hate the changing POV. Why not tell the story from the viewpoint of a survivor. I would rather know that a particular person would survive than jump around and feel so disconnected from the characters. Also, the glimpses into each character's story was distracting and slowed the story down. I got bored. So one minute I am completely grossed out and the next minute I want to skip forward.

Wow. This book was an attention grabber right from the start. I felt for each and every person in this story. The character development was excellent! However, the story was truly disgusting, gory and just plain old icky on so many levels, and yes I thoroughly enjoyed it! The ending was heartbreaking and by that I don't mean everyone dies. I'd have to say it's in my top 15 of best books I've read this year. Yep, I'd highly recommend this story and author.

stephen king's endorsement makes sense - this is a rip-off of his "dreamcatcher." it also borrows heavily from the 2006 film "slither" although sadly it lacks the movie's black humor. i'm usually not a squeamish reader but had to skip a section where a kitten is tortured to death. fortunately, it's a quick read & although i never became emotionally attached to any of them, i did finish it only to see which, if any, characters made it out alive. shallow & not particularly impressive.

As you are likely aware from all of the other reviews, this book is super gory. The story itself was interesting and the characters were awesome. I loved that Cutter actually developed 5 very different scout members and showed how each handled the stress of the situation. Shelley was super creepy and I really enjoyed seeing the story from his perspective. From the beginning, there was something a bit "off" with him and Cutter did not disappoint in how "off" Shelley really was. Newton fell a bit flat for me toward the end. I really liked him in the beginning, but it just seemed that attention started going toward the development of the other characters. As a result, I felt that at the time that we should have really been pulling for Newton, we were not exposed to much more of his personality so much as we were to the others.

I was a huge fan of how Cutter introduced information (GQ article, counseling sessions, letters, etc.) and was happy to see that he thanked Stephen King for inspiration. The transcript of the gorilla video made my stomach turn. (On a more personal note, do not read this book during lunch.) I wish there was a bit more background information on certain characters (such as how Tom and the doctor met), but I get that things like that may have been edited out.

I think people who like Richard Laymon may be able to deal with the gore of this book pretty well. If you want to see if you can handle the grossness that is in this book, read pages 146-151. For me, this would be the most graphic part of the book as far as what happens to those who get infected.

Let me state for the record that my number one favorite genre always has been and always will be: horror. That’s right ladies and gents. I am a proud hardcore horror fan. That said, I also have to admit that even I – self-proclaimed, hardcore horror fan – was grossed out and disturbed by this absolutely brilliant horror novel. It’s violent, bloody, gory, horrifying, gross, sick, twisted and impossible to put down. I will even go as far as to say that I think the true master of horror – the King himself – will feel slightly disturbed by this book.

So, now that you know this horror masterpiece is probably not for you, move on to the next book on your to-be-read list. But, if you’re like me, a true fan of horror, get yourself a copy of The Troop asap, because I can promise you you’ve probably never read anything like this before. Heed my warning though, peeps. This story is not for the squeamish or those who are easily offended by explicit violence and cruelty. As hardcore a fan as I am of horror, I often had to put this book down to take a breather. This author’s imagination would easily put King’s to shame.

As you can tell from the summary, this is the story about five boy scouts and their scout master trapped on a little island after a sick man stumbles across them and infect the scout leader with…something. The scout leader is also a doctor and he tries to save the sick man, but what comes out of the sick man’s abdomen when the scout master / doctor opens him up, is what nightmares are made of. And from there everything goes downhill, because unbeknownst to the boys and their scout master, the island is placed under quarantine, which means nothing and no-one gets on the island (from the mainland) and nothing and no-one is let off the island. The boys and their leader have no idea what they’re up against, and no matter that it’s not enough that they’re up against a monstrous, genetically-altered killer, one of the boys turns out to also be a psychopath.

To say The Troop is a suspenseful read is an understatement. It’s all that and so much more. Apart from the cruelty and one boy’s sadistic acts, I loved just about everything about this book. The characters each have their own distinct personalities and there were two specifically that I was rooting for. One of the boys I couldn’t stand. He has absolutely zero redeeming qualities and I’m positive the author wants the reader to hate him. Mostly, it’s the premise that kept me reading. Without giving anything away, all I’m going to say is that I’m intrigued by books about genetic experiments that go haywire. I loved the idea of killer… Well, I’m not saying. But it gave me the creepy crawly heebie jeebies. What made it even more interesting is that the story is told from the boys’ point of view (who have no idea of why and what’s happening to them), but also through testimonies, video footage, journals and magazine articles to give the reader a clear insight of the where, the how, and the why. The big reveal is undoubtedly a terrifying twist.

Overall this was an awesome read with a marvelously constructed plot. I’m definitely going to keep an eye out for more books by this author to add to my wishlist. Again, do keep in mind that The Troop is not for sensitive readers. But it is an original and well-written tale that’ll be featuring in your nightmares long after finishing it.

A Boy Scout troop goes off to an island for a camping weekend. As with any group of high school students who are members of a Boy Scout troop, the group includes the nerd, the bully, the ones who will follow anyone who is the leader at the moment, the practical one (the one with common sense). So as to not give the plot away, let's just say that they encounter some "difficulties" including a sick Scout Leader. This is partially sci-fi, thriller, and mystery. I enjoyed reading it, even though this is not normally a book I would pick up to read. Even though this could be considered a "Young Adult" book, it was written well enough that it kept my interest throughout the book. I would recommend this book for those who love sci-fi books or a real thriller. The author grabs your attention from the first page, and the book kept me entertained until the end.BUT, this is not for the faint-at-heart!
Although this was a free book for me to review through Net Gallery, the opinions expressed in this review are my own.

The Troop by Nick Cutter (pseudonym) is a true horror novel full of enough graphic, gory, disgusting scenes to make anyone's stomach heave. If you are a fan of terror novels it's highly recommended.

In The Troop something is very hungry. When the emaciated man shows up in Prince County diner on Prince Edward Island, and can't get enough to eat, it raises suspicions. It is the beginning of a nightmare for a boy scout troop camping out on Falstaff Island, PEI, when the hungry man steals a boat. Looking like death itself he ends up on Falstaff island, and comes to the scout's cabin looking for food.

The boy scouts are led by Dr. Tim Riggs. The five boys - Kent, Ephraim, Max, Shelly, and Newton - are all Venture Scouts and around 14 years old. They have known each other their whole lives. This camping trip is probably their last trip together before they all begin to go their separate ways. When Tim hears the boat approaching the island he knows two things. It is a boat and that he and the boys had no weapons other than knives and a flare gun.

When the skeletal wreck of a man shows up, Tim knows instinctively that this man is sick in some unnatural way that he has never encountered. It sends a spike of pure dread down his spine and he knows that this man is unclean. What the scouts don't know is that the military has been tracking the sick man. They know about the bioengineered nightmare the man's body contains, the threat it poses, and they cordoned off the area, establishing a no-fly, no-watercraft zone. It means the scouts are left to face the unknown terror on their own.

Cutter uses excerpts of newspaper clippings, interviews, journal entries, and magazine profiles interspersed in the story to provide background information or give extra insight into Dr. Clive Edgerton's scientific experiment gone terribly wrong. This works quite well in the story. We're privy to information the scouts don't have but we also gain extra insight into the scouts themselves.

Clearly, the scouts themselves are all obvious stereotypes of various types of teens. This is blatant enough that it does seem formulaic and you know that in reality these kids would not still be in scouts together. This didn't bother me because the point of the novel is the gruesome story and the terror it induces as you read.

The Troop is not for the faint-hearted or anyone with a sensitive stomach. There is some pure terror along with blood and guts and gore. Cutter is graphic in descriptions of scientific experiments on and abuse of animals. Most importantly, if you have any squeamishness over worms, skip this one.

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Gallery Books via Edelweiss for review purposes.

I got this book through NetGalley to review right before it came out. I feel bad that I forgot to review but, I just saw Nick Cutter has a new book due out this week and I thought yes, I need to do this. The book was UNBELIEVABLE! I read it in less then 24 hours - I could barely put it down for longer then 20 minutes! At first I was very hesitate about reading it. I love horror books but, I was leery of the warning about the graphic nature of animal testing. I is very graphic in that aspect for sure and if you are faint at heart or get quezzy, this is not the book for you. However, I got over the animal testing because it was critical to the book. The book reminds me a little of the Lord of the Flies in away. The character is great in the book. You feel sorry for this boys and the scout master right away.... however... at some point you'll be rooting for the boys to kill each other. For a few days, I would look at my food twice wondering if I really wanted to eat that. lol. If you are looking for a different author, you have got to read Nick Cutter's books! This book will not disappoint you! I can't wait to read his new book The Deep!

A friend who hasn't read this yet, recommended it to me as she had heard it was one of the scariest books ever. I didn't bother reading the reviews, but took it out of the library. Well Thank God I didn't bother buying it because after reading it the best I can say is it deserves every one star review on here. Sometimes I think people are leery of speaking up when something is getting good reviews (and Stephen king himself endorsed it) but this book is like several of his stories chopped up and mashed together MINUS any suspense, character development or anything that will want you to keep reading. There seems to be no plot, just gore, and that gets tiresome. I cared about none of the characters and only read it when i had absolutely nothing else to do and even hoped it would get better. It never did. The one star reviews on here are all spot on in everything that is wrong with this awful novel. Whoever Nick Cutter is, he should give up this genre.

First of all thank you kindly to the publisher for the advance copy of this book via netgalley.

First of all I WILL say that this is not for the faint hearted – however if you are a fan of Horror then you will ADORE this one. Following the misfortunes of one scout troop and their leader as they battle to stay alive when faced with, well, not sure what to call it without giving plot away, so perhaps you should hold on and find out for yourselves…

Some of the “horror” content is graphic in nature - I am not squeamish however some parts of this book did make me cringe – having been brought up on Stephen King’s older novels and those where he does go down the full horror route that is no mean feat (Dreamcatcher anyone?) However I would perhaps liken it to “Lord of the Flies” in general feel and scope as others have. This is a book where children have to leave childish things behind…and as such adults and older teenagers would enjoy it if they enjoy this genre. I would HIGHLY recommend that no person reads this novel while eating their dinner!

The story is well imagined and intriguing – its not all about the horror – and the characters are well drawn and you will root for them. It is also one of those books where if you were watching it in movie form you would be playing “pick your survivor”.. there are no guarantees here about the well being of any one person you may care for. Its cleverly done and will surely keep you turning the pages. Oh. And I slept with the light on…

All in all, as a book blogger and someone who tries to look after your welfare – I would definitely put this on your reading list if you like horror or thrillers and don’t mind a bit of blood and stuff – but if you are nervous in nature and would not usually go for a book like this then you are probably wise to avoid this one also! I very much enjoyed it and I imagine that it will do very well. Try it…it can’t hurt you…Honest.

Happy Reading Folks!

Some 45-years ago, the Boyscout troop I was in went on an overnight camping trip in late November. It rained and then snowed and we were huddled in our tents, and half of us got the stomach bug. Thinking back on it, that was a walk in the park compared to what The Troop, by Nick Cutter, faces as the five of them and their scoutmaster begin a weekend camping trip on a small, deserted island off the coast of Prince Edward Island.

The short review: Frightening, relentless, graphically gory.

The long review: There are two ways to handle a horror story. One is with subtlety, the other is with head-on violence and gore. If you're preference is for the latter, this is a disturbingly good read. If not....

All seems well as the troop settles in for their first night on lonely Falstaff Island. Then, an escapee from a military-financed biological research lab arrives. Gaunt, starving, and dangerous, the zombie-like character carries within him a genetically engineered, highly infectious parasite that will leave a trail of blood and guts.

Perhaps more creatively, is how the author has given the middle-school-aged boys not just a terrifying, but palpable danger to defend against, but also a quietly sadistic, psychotic from their own ranks to contend with. The portraiture of him is chilling and makes for pages of graphic prose that are almost too difficult to read. Of course, like commuters rubbernecking an accident on the other side of the highway, we have to look anyway.

Added to all of that, there's the mystery of "why?" no rescue comes from the mainland, and you have a thoroughly scary read that will keep you turning pages.

The Troop is well written, if grim; don't look for any humorous breaks in the tension. If graphic gore isn't your thing, I don't recommend this book for you. If it is, you will (as some of the characters do) feast.

Although the protagonists are young teens, this book is for adults.

A scoutmaster and five teenage boys spend a weekend on tiny Falstaff Island, just off the coast of the province of Prince Edward Island in the Canadian Maritimes. A man shows up unexpectedly in a small motor boat. He is so emaciated that his skin seems to be hanging off his bones like clothes that are too big for him. And he is literally dying of hunger.
The Troop is the creepy, with gusts to downright gross, story of this small group that is infected by whatever has gotten into this strange man. The five very different boys have to fight for survival against this mysterious, fast-acting disease, as well as each other, in a story that has shades of both The Lord of the Flies and the Masque of the Red Death. Definitely not for the faint-hearted, or those with queasy stomachs, it is a tense, yet fun read for those who like their horror up close and personal.

I was not prepared for this book. Not at all prepared for the gore and terror, not for the psychological depth and downright itchiness of the writing and if you told me a week ago that I could be this scared and disturbed by a book about a boy scout troop, well to say I'd be skeptical would be an understatement. I just wasn't prepared all the way around.

This book is so hard to read and it just gets harder as it goes. Not because it's bad, but because it compares to watching Requiem for a dream. You know it's brilliant, but it is so effective you just want it to be over and never think about it again.

For every chapter of this book you would have to watch approximately 30 minutes of kitten videos online as a pallet cleanser...then eventually that stops working. This book makes you want to take a bath in bleach (then drink a little for good measure). And good God! The part about the turtle! I cried! I do not remember the last time I cried from a book.

All in all this book was a train wreck you cannot look away from. It is a book you cannot stop reading, even though you sooooo want to. DO NOT read this if you are squeamish, but I recommend it if you want to be surprised and disturbed by a book and be kept up nights. 5 stars Mr. Cutter! You really f**ked me up with this one! Can't wait for the next.

The plot was very good, but I eventually quit reading after the author kept going into over complex animal abuse/torture segments. He skimmed over details quickly when it came to every other part of story, but elaborated with depth, when it came to hurting animals. After this happened several times throughout the story I have up and quit reading. There is something seriously disturbing with this author and not in a good way like Stephen king or other authors. I'll never read another Nick cutter book again.

There were definitely a few parts of this book that turned my stomach. The author pushes it far...I was worried he was going to go a bit farther in some places, but he didn't. It was scary, but I kept waiting for it to be juuuust a little bit scarier. I enjoyed it but it's not something I'll be rereading. It seemed to rely too much on the gross out factor and I'm not into that.

The Troop is the story of a boy scout group that goes camping on an island. It's just them and their boyscout master until a very ill looking man shows up on their island begging for food. They take him in. The infection that the man is carrying quickly starts spreading. Will anyone survive?

This book showcases a multitude of viewpoints, including the scoutmaster, the scouts, governmental officials, etc. I like that style. As the story progresses we get to see just how sick and corrupted some of the people are.

This book was so horrific and disturbing at times that I actually read with my hand over my open mouth. Not even kidding. And even know as I type I keep thinking I see squiggly lines in my peripheral vision.

***ARC provided from Netgalley***

I’ve got to admit – the very first thing that grabbed me about this book was the brilliant recommendation from Stephen King, and I quote: “The Troop scared the hell out of me and I couldn’t put it down. This is old-school horror at its best.” STEPHEN KING

Right, so it scared Stephen King, the master of horror. I had to read it! I must admit, I spent the rest of the book wondering when Stephen King became such a wuss! I’m not saying the book was bad – it was actually a very good story. My rating is 3 1/2 stars rather than just a straight 3. It's gross, disgusting, and disturbing to think what could be living inside. But scary???

The only thing that scared me was the thought that some parasitic organism could be inside me, devouring my insides…

There were moments reading this book where all I wanted to do was rush down the Pharmacy and buy triple strength worming tablets for the family and all our pets!

I found it a little difficult to rate this book because it took me quite a while to get into it. Don’t get me wrong – it starts with a bang, with a very, very hungry man stumbling onto an island where a troop of scouts are camping with their leader. You knew straight away that something bad was going to happen. And those first initial chapters, where the truth about the stranger unravelled, I was completely enthralled. But then things ground to a halt when we had to meet and get to know all of the teenage boys.

It took me a really long time to get my head around them all, and for them not to just merge into one hormonal, horny, gross mini-man. In fact, it wasn’t until I was about 60 percent of the way through the book before I really started to understand their individual personalities.

It is because of that slow middle that I’ve only rated the book 3 1/2 stars. The plot and the writing was brilliant but I just struggled with the characters.

For starters, there’s Shelley who was probably the most fascinating of all the boys, and that’s simply because he’s a psychopath! Yep, the kitty-torturing, friend-murdering kind of psychopath who is completely off kilter. The boy you hope to God gets consumed by bioengineered parasites.

The rest were a little more stereotyped (so much so, I have trouble remembering most of their names). There’s Max, the coroner’s son who is probably the most normal of all the kids. Then you have the nerd, the angry kid, and the born leader (whose father is the local police sheriff).

By the time you hit the halfway mark, the story really kicks in, and I found I couldn’t put it down. In fact, there is the real tale of the book. It took me 3 weeks to read the first half, and only 1 night to read the second half!

So anyway – here’s my good, bad, and downright ugly!

The good:

As this is an ARC from the publisher, I had to agree not to directly quote from the book. So any reference to the book will be rewritten in my words.

I really liked that the author chose a tiny island just off Prince Edward Island as his setting. I grew up reading and watching Anne of Green Gables, so having a disturbing thriller set on the idyllic island almost seemed fitting – like the antithesis of Green Gables.

Nick Cutter knows how to engage the senses. He has cast off the tired old cliche and gone to town in finding new ways to describe things. It’s not just a crescent moon but a bone fishhook in a clear sky. Or again with the moon, when he described it still being in the morning sky like the last melancholy guest at a dinner party, too lonely to leave. Or how about describing skin as being stretched like crepe paper over flinty outcroppings, which tears too quickly, or a man’s pores being described as a million tiny mouths stretched into silent screams…

It was also brilliant taking something as mundane as intestinal worms and turning them into a full-scale biohazard with the power to destroy the world.

I liked the fact that Nick Cutter wasn’t afraid to push the bounds of what is normal. A 13 year old psychopath? Why not! There have been many people who complained about the torture scenes, but I actually think that they perfectly showed how far down the rabbit hole Shelley had gone, as well as the degenerative morals of the serial killer in the making. Sure, they were disturbing, but I understood why they were there - and let's face it. It's not like any real animals were harmed in the making of the book. (Hmm, does that make me a psychopath too?).

While I challenge the book’s claims to be horror (I suppose some might find it scary), it was disturbing and terrifying in its own way. Cutter portrayed the boy’s fears perfectly, and I found my toes curling up as I read of Max going down into the cave where one of the infected boys was hiding out, knowing how determined those worms were to infect and destroy everything in their path. I could literally feel the claustrophobia, and the terror coming off Max in waves.

While it was disturbing at times to see the infected so hungry they would literally eat anything – bugs, dirt, wood, even their own fingers… it was perfectly done to show the horror of this infection.

I also loved the wider ethical questions Cutter brings up. Is science going too far? And would members of the government release a virus into an environment they thought they could control? What was supposed to start out as a diet pill somehow became a biological weapon of the most sinister means. Brilliant really. Personally I think as the world shuns nuclear and chemical weapons that we will see more acts of biological warfare.

One aspect that I found fascinating was the introduction of the court documents very early on in the book. So it’s almost like you’re glimpsing the end before you even find out what happens to the boys. It was skillfully done, and probably saved the book, which would have struggled to hold its own with just the boys directing the plot (particularly during that slow middle section).

Okay – I was saving this bit for the last of the good, because it’s not about the book as much as about the controversy caused by the author. I stated up front that Stephen King provides probably the most compelling reason anyone will have for picking up this book. He is the king (pun intended) of horror fiction, so when he says something scared the s***e out of him, you take notice. But then confusingly, right at the end, in the acknowledgements the author says Stephen King has never read his book. I must admit, I had a WTF moment when I read that, and felt a little bit ripped off. But that’s not the end of the story. Apparently, the author has received quite a bit of kickback with people accusing him of cashing in, and even being unethical. Must have got pretty bad because the author has actually come out and set the record straight, saying that when the ARC was written, Stephen King had not read the book, but has since read it and given his recommendation.

Anyway, nothing like a bit of controversy to help sell books.

Okay, so that’s what I DID like. What didn’t work?

The bad:

Like I said, the biggest issue I had was connecting with the boys. Perhaps that’s because they were 13 and 14. They were gross boys who enjoyed swearing just for the sake of it. They were immature, and often unlikeable. But maybe that’s just because I’m a 40 year old woman. At one stage, one of the boys quotes a movie, and the others comment on him quoting a movie, but not once do they actually tell you what movie the quote was from. I certainly didn’t recognise the quote – perhaps others will – perhaps others don’t even care – but for me, it left me with a question. While I praised the author’s brilliant descriptions, I’m also going to list them as a bad aspect too. Why? Because there is something comforting about a cliche that actually makes things familiar and easier to read. I can just see people hissing and holding up crosses against such sacrilege but when you are reading what is supposed to be a fast-paced novel, it can actually be distracting to have to stop and ponder what someone was doing because the description is so unusual. Look, I’m all for finding new ways to describe certain aspects. Like I said, the fishhook moon was great. But sometimes, the descriptions slowed me down because I was trying to figure out what I was supposed to be seeing. Sometimes, all you need to know is the sky is blue, unless the sky is of such utmost importance that it needs to be described in intimate detail.

I also mentioned above that I liked that Cutter went there in making Shelley a psychopath. However, there were times when his actions were in danger of becoming cartoonish, and where Shelley had become more of a villain than the already terrifying villain of the book.

At one stage in the book, the scout leader kept referring to himself as HAL9000, which was apparently some reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Only it was used so much, it became irritating, particularly as I’ve never even seen the movie.

I know that it’s a physical possibility for parasites to be engineered to the point where they become the perfect weapon. Still – having a worm climb out of a man and strangle him to death… It was just too unbelievable. Rather than terrifying me, it actually made me laugh. At one point, they were flying through the air, and sounded more like circus worms than anything else. While the author has full poetic license to rewrite physics if he wants to, sometimes keeping one foot grounded in reality makes things more scary than when it is so unrealistic, you know it can’t be true.

There was another scene which I found really silly, when one of the boys takes advice from another (yep, I’m deliberately speaking in circles as I don’t want to have too many spoilers) and basically starts cutting himself. I’m not talking about a little nick here or there, but deep gashes. I found myself wondering if ANYONE could really be that stupid and gullible. Even with killer worms surrounding me, could I really dissolve to that point? I’d like to think not.

The downright ugly:

There’s only one thing I will rate as downright ugly – and that’s more for other people’s benefit than mine.

There is a lot of torture in this book. Animal and human torture! If that’s a hot button for you, as it is for a lot of women in particular, then you may prefer to steer clear of the book. I found it disturbing but understood it was in context (and let’s face it, also fictional – it’s not like the author really killed a couple of kittens to research his book). But there will be people who won’t be able to turn off their brains.

Another warning would be the intensely graphic nature of some of the scenes. They are rather gross, and things get very, very bloody at times. If you are even remotely weak stomached, then you might not want to read.

I’m not sure a book like this can be called entertaining, but it was certainly enthralling (minus the middle bit). I can’t comment on its comparisons to Lord of the Flies or 28 Days Later, as I haven’t read either book. I’ve also heard other people compare it to other books, but again, I haven’t read any of them. So for me, it was a completely new concept, and one that was, for the most part, very well done.

DISCLAIMER: This book was downloaded through NetGalley in return for an honest appraisal. Due to the fact it was an ARC, and digitally unedited to ensure against pirating, I had to suspend my usual need to comment on editing and just enjoy the story for what it was.

Reading a book about a guy drinking his own piss would have been easier to swallow than this particular novel. To be clear, this isn't a bad book. It's not even a poorly written book. The structure, with letters and interviews and the plot moving forward, kept me on edge, while the slaughtering and stomach-churning antics kept my nausea on red alert. If I could have punctured a hole through my brain without doing any permanent damage, I might have briefly considered the notion, before I permanently discarded in the ocean. If I could have jammed about five thousand volts of electricity through my body without the need for a diaper, it might have been a viable alternative. But in the end, selective amnesia works just fine, and I plan on using it to its fullest.

What disturbed me more than tapeworms exiting through open orifices was there wasn't a single character that I could stand behind without worrying about taking an elbow to the chin. THE TROOP made me want to march in the opposite direction in a most expeditious manner, and I kept reading through sheer determination and a need to push myself to the limit rather than some impending notion that there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I probably looked away from the page as much as I looked at it.

This tale made me realize that coming up with the absolute worst case scenario and working backwards isn't necessarily a good thing, especially when the boat was stuck at full speed ahead, and I couldn't find a way to turn off the engine or drop anchor. I plan on employing a taste tester to consume my food before I do, and if I see any suspicious or slightly pale or slow-talking individuals, I plan on running first and asking questions later.

And if you want to read a review by a reviewer or three who actually knows what the heck he or she's talking about, you might want to take a gander at what Dan or Trudi or Kelly or Karen has to say on the subject. Since after wiping my brain, I will now consume applesauce, Jell-O, smoothies, and liquid vegetables for the rest of my days.

I received this book for free through NetGalley.

Robert Downs
Author of Falling Immortality: Casey Holden, Private Investigator

THE TROOP features a group a Boy Scouts on a deserted island honing their skills with their Scoutmaster. What they don’t know is they are ground zero for an out-of-control experiment of a sociopathic genius. When the nasty smelling stranger comes to their camp house looking for food…their nightmare is just beginning. THE TROOP is viscerally gruesome story of genetic manipulation at its worst. The amount of graphic violence may be too much for a lot of readers to stomach. The psychological breakdown of the scouts was interesting to watch, but as with any military operation, there wasn’t a satisfactory conclusion - which actually works for this book. THE TROOP is a horror story in the truest sense of the word and makes you wonder who the real monster is…

Five boy scouts and their scoutmaster are enjoying a camping trip on an isolated island off the coast of Prince Edward Island.The first night out, a man, so deadly thin he looks more like a skeleton covered in flesh-coloured paint, shambles to the cabin and begs for something to eat. The scoutmaster, a doctor, immediately realizes the man is sick but with no illness that he can recognize. His first instinct is to send him back into the forest but his oath to do no harm takes over and lets him in. Thus begins one of the best horror stories I have read in a very long time.

The Troop, by author Nick Cutter, is more 'ick' than 'eek' but, make no mistake, this is horror at its finest, more frightening because it's plausible. It's an experiment gone wrong...or maybe not...and the five boys, just on the cusp of manhood, are forced to fight a horror, well, I was going to say beyond imagination but, unfortunately, too easy to imagine. The motto of the boy scouts may be 'Be prepared' but no one could be prepared for this.

The boys and their scoutmaster are likeable with one exception - like all good horror movies set on isolated islands, there is a psychopath in their midst, a boy with dark disturbing hungers who may have found the perfect 'friends' to share them with. And author Nick Cutter really knows how to ratchet up the creep factor even in his descriptions:

"The beach was a bonelike strip unfurling to the shoreline. The sea advanced up to the shore with a series of minute sucking inhales. It sounded like a huge toothless creature swallowing the island."

One caveat, though: normally, when I review a really good horror tale, I suggest locking your doors; with The Troop, I would recommend not eating. Trust me on this and thank me later.

"The Troop" is a very solidly written novel. The characters are well written. The storyline is engaging. The suspense that Cutter creates keeps you guessing until the page-turning ending.

While the story is complete, I can't help thinking that Nick Cutter may have something more in mind for this tale.

4 1/2 STARS

I selected this title because Stephen King said it scared him ! I figured, it had to be pretty scary . Scary is when you're afraid to turn the lights out . It wasn't even close to that . But I did read it in just two sittings , so at least it was engaging .

Great written book. I have been told its a pseudo for someone. The book is compared to 28 days later meets Lord of the Flies. It isn't that. Think Cabin Fever meets The Body. The boys in the story are like what a troop is like…a bunch different boys. These are kids that are best buds. They have been thrown together for scouts. I don't know if some of these boys sound like scouts tho. Scouts is a commitment. Parents have to be involved. In some cases I get a sense that some of these boys do not have active parents in their lives. Quibbling! The book is entertaining and a solid reader. Priced a bitt high for a kindle book but a better return on your dollar than the cheaper throw away horror at cheaper prices.

First off, this is a sci-fi book! It doesn't say this anywhere on the book cover but it is. Glad I'm renting it from library & didn't waste my money.
A troop of young teen boys go camping & stay in a cabin with scoutmaster Tim & a man approaches. The man ends up having something- a "tapeworm"- in him & infects the whole troop. Its not scary at all- I wouldn't know why Stephen King of all people would write a review the way he did; it somewhat of a suspenseful book but its nothing what I expected the book to be at all. I guess 'don't judge a book by its cover' really applies to me here.

The author spent WAAAAY too much time over and over and over again describing the one kid torturing animals. It was like the author was getting into it. We got it: the kid was a psychopath. He beat it to death. He kept repeating different episodes of animal torture that the kid performed which really had nothing to do with a biological infestation.I couldn't listen anymore.

What a nightmare read that was. I got physicality sick during three different parts. I quit it many times but had to know the ending. Uggg, it was so awful, so realistically frightening, I wish I never picked it up. I feel sick now just trying thinking of some of the horrors between the pages. It was a great horror book, it was pure horror and left me ill at heart. Stephen King said it was a story of nightmares and he was so right. It took me 9 days to read this black souled book. I feel like I'll never be the same as I was before, damaged and scarred. One word review-SICK
I gave it 4 stars, as horrible as it was it was exactly as it should have been, no fluff from this author

Listen here, this is only the second actual horror novel I've ever read. And it was a fantastic book. Cutter's writing is superb. I've never written an the store review before--and trust me, I read a lot of books--but this has gotten me off my butt to write one!
Maybe I'm biased since it is one of my first horror novel experiences, and I did see that he got inspiration from Carrie (which I haven't read) for the format, but I ADORED the way he used multiple genres in his novel. I've seen articles and letters in books before (who hasn't?), but never so many different ways of feeding us information! It was the perfect way to integrate some much needed answers to our questions. I also loved the way he didn't information dump the boys pasts or appearances on us; it was all gently folded in between the current events in the book giving us insight, but also keeping us interested and not left out of the action for very long.
Even with the stereotypes, I think they worked very well within the novel. And things don't end the way you think they might. The entire story has me guessing who would live and who would die and how! Especially after the tidbits we get from the court transcripts and such that take place after the events on the island.
Also, as a new person on the 'horror' scene Is like to say that I don't understand why everyone is so up in arms about the gore. When I read the reviews warning of a kitten getting tortured, and then I read it and was like, that's it? This is what everyone is complaining about? It's not as gory as everyone made it out to be. Though if you are super squemish then yes, stay away from this book. Because the 'torture' of the kitten isn't the worst (meaning most gruesome) part of this novel by far.
All in all, I enjoyed this book greatly. I just so happened to have just finished The Ruins before this novel so I can see he got inspiration from there as well! I enjoyed the read very much and will be looking at his other novel currently out as well as look out for future novels :)

The synopsis and details given do not tell you enough about the edge of your seat read that The Troop has proven to be for me. I experienced so many emotions, not the least of which were anxiety and fear. This tightly plotted story managed to weave the science and human nature quite well, I actually felt sorry for the scientists! The terror and fear that ensue when the "epidemic" and "outbreak" keeps spreading is palpable. I was riveted by the unraveling of the characters and the plot!
The characters were multi dimensional and compelling - I found it easy to connect emotionally to the characters and felt the impact of their changing environment and values deeply. I would categorize this book as character driven, but the suspense brings it on home. Excellent work, by Nick Cutter had me reading til way too late in the night and wishing for a book club of readers to discuss my experience with.
*I received my copy from NetGalley.com in exchange for an honest review,.

“If you call the tune, you also have to pay the piper when he begs his due.”

Sometimes a cover makes a difference. In this case I saw two things that caught my attention: “Stephen King” and “a novel of terror”. If you’re going to write a horror novel, there’s no one better to blurb your book than Stephen King. Being a fan of King, I was willing to give The Troop by Nick Cutter a chance. I was not disappointed. Not only does Cutter write a good story, his craft is on par with King. The sensory descriptions in the novel create vivid visuals, bringing the story fully to life. It’s filled with intimately familiar characters who each bring forth a different aspect of the story. There are layers to the book, ideas and themes hinted at but not outright mentioned. And then there’s the monster.

“…this was the blackness that must exist at the bottom of the sea—a blackness prowled by sightless things whose skin was so pale and gelatinous you could see the inner workings of their bodies. Things with nightmare anatomies that would evoke cries of horror were they ever glimpsed in the sunlight: blind eyes bulging atop skinny stalks, rubbery mouths big enough to swallow a Hyundai, rows of tiny needlelike teeth. Such creatures could only survive in the deeps…”

The story takes place on Falstaff Island, situated north of Prince Edward Island off on the far eastern coast of Canada. There a troop of Boy Scouts are spending the weekend with their Scoutmaster. They are alone on the island. Just a group of five teenage boys, Scoutmaster Tim, and the beauty of nature. It’s a peaceful retreat until a stranger shows up on the beach. A stranger who carries a dark secret. After that, everything goes wrong.

“Worms are much more interesting. Worms are indiscriminate, you see. They will eat anything from a hippopotamus to an aphid. They are the ultimate piggybackers: invite one inside and it’s there for good. They’re nightmare houseguests: once they’re in, you’ll never get rid of them. They’re one of the oldest species on earth. Right after the crust cooled there were worms swimming in the primordial soup. The first creature to flop out of a tide pool onto land had a worm inside of it, I guarantee you…They say cockroaches will be the last things left on earth after a nuclear holocaust. Don’t believe it. The last thing on earth will be a worm in the guts of those cockroaches, sucking them dry.”

At the heart of this story is a question. What’s more monstrous: a monster or the monster that lies within us all? Through the chilling events in The Troop, that question is explored from multiple angles by the complex cast of characters. There’s the stranger who has a monster inside of him. It’s a creature without remorse, driven to feed and kill, but worst of all, resilient and resourceful. Unlike most monsters, the author uses one that’s very easy to relate to. The creature is something most people have first hand knowledge of. It’s something we can encounter in real life. The exception is this one has been genetically modified, a very real possibility in the world we live in. In this way, the monster in this book is somewhat like the shark in Jaws. It’s not a fanciful werewolf or alien from outer space. This monster is grounded in reality. But it’s not the only monster in the book.

“People do the worst things to each other…”

The only thing worse than a real life creature turned into a monster is a human who is a monster. Sociopaths and psychos are all too real. They live among us and blend in. You can’t spot them until it’s too late. That concept is fully utilized for some of the characters in this book. There’s the scientist who intentionally created the monster. There’s the people in power who funded the project. Then there’s the child on the island who’s not like the other boys. He’s a bit anti-social. Quiet. Reserved. He doesn’t feel emotions like normal people. For fun, he tortures insects and animals. With a real monster roaming the island, the boys come to learn that there are other threats that are just as deadly and terrifying.

“He’d expected so much more. Some kind of revelation. A sign of the gears that meshed behind the serene fabric of this world—a glimpse of its seething madness. But no. In the end he’d seen only mocking resignation—and, finally, bliss.”

Built around that aspect of monsters is adolescence. The main characters in this story are five teenage boys. They’re at that stage that lingers between childhood and young adulthood. Life is part play but also responsibility. Among them is the jock, the risk taker, the nerd, the strange one, and the normal kid. The jock relies on strength to assert his authority, his position challenged only by the risk taker who lives dangerously and struggles with a fiery temper. The nerd bears the brunt of their teasing, but is an accepted part of their group, and the most resourceful when solving problems. The strange one tags along and is left alone. An entity they don’t dare challenge for reasons they don’t quite understand. The normal kid rounds out the dynamic of the group, completing the representation of youth. All of their skills and flaws shape the direction of the story. From leadership conflicts to acts of survival, the best and worst of humanity is illustrated.

By incorporating all of these various themes and aspects, The Troop tells a story that’s intellectually provocative and yet rich in escapism. The skillful use of detail and fully fleshed out characters makes it easy to escape into the events of the book. The layering of ideas, however, gives the events a realistic value. It raises questions and concerns that we as a society have yet to fully answer. How do we deal with the monsters among us? How can we prevent the creation of new monsters brought about by the wonders of science? But most concerning of all, how do we acknowledge our own monstrous traits? In a story that combines Stand By Me with The Ruins and with a touch of Lord of the Flies, The Troop is an engrossing tale of adolescence, horror and humanity. I give it a five out of five. If you like horror and Stephen King books, this one should go on your must read list.

Mild spoilers.

"The Troop" has a few good scenes but is disappointing overall. It tells a story that has been told countless times before without breaking any new ground, instead relying mostly on cliches. (SPOILER: Although I will give Cutter credit for Edgerton's back story and what he was attempting to accomplish with the pill) The gory scenes are disgustingly fun (if you like that sort of thing. I do.) but the book drags and I often found myself more interested in the trial than the events on the island. Unfortunately, the trial is only reference in bits and pieces. Perhaps this is a case of less being more, but I don't think so. I honestly would have preferred reading the court stenographer's account of the trial as a means of piecing together what happened on the island as opposed to spending so much time with the boys on the island itself. Dr. Edgerton was easily the most interesting character in the book, but, unfortunately, we get very little time with it. It would have been a lot of fun to read his testimony on the witness stand.

I say skip it.

After just finishing Nick Cutter's absolutely superb novel, THE TROOP, there are countless thoughts and emotions racing through my mind. I just found this book to be such a satisfying read on so many different levels.

The basic story outline has been discussed by other reviewers. We begin the adventure with Scoutmaster Tim Riggs and his Canadian boy scout troop on a weekend trip to Falstaff Island.The 14 year old boys come in a range of shapes, sizes, and intelligences. We have the pudgy and nerdy Newton, the maladjusted and somewhat delusional Ephraim, the psychotic and withdrawn Shelley, the adult challenging, dominant male Kent, and the seemingly average Max. And of course, we have "The Hungry Man" who visits the island, unleashing an unknown plague upon the man and boys. Falstaff Island is quite isolated and uninhabited, with no cell phone or radio contact available to the outside world. The boys must solve all conflicts on their own...

Nick Cutter is so effective in setting up each of the boy characters as individuals with their own faults, fears, and strengths. I think what makes this novel so powerful is that it could have been an amazing story even without the terrible disease that is unleashed upon the group. Just the inclusion of 14 year old boys who are on the verge of leaving scouting behind and possessed of evolving personalities is in and of itself a wonderful spring board for a great story. When you consider the relationships and actions between an intellect (Newt), a sociopath (Shelley), a narcissist (Kent), an anger management case (Ephraim), and the every-boy (Max) this book could have gone in all kinds of interesting directions even without the elements of horror and gruesome infestation.

But man.... I am so glad Cutter gave us everything he did!!! This book is such a thrill ride emotionally, psychologically, and viscerally. And, beyond the thrill ride, there is a lot of meat to the story and a lot of details and interaction to contemplate. As a reader, you really care about how these kids struggle, how they cope, how they succeed, and how they fail, all in the face of unimaginable circumstances. I have to agree with Stephen King that THE TROOP was a page turner from the get go, and it is definitely a tale that will haunt me for some time to come.

I know I'm a little behind, as most of the reading world has already read this book, but I just read The Troop by Nick Cutter, and I have to say this book really impressed me like few others have in recent memories. A wonderful story with pitch perfect pacing, characters that felt authentic and three-dimensional. Cutter's use of interviews and transcripts and articles was done strategically and really enhanced the story. But above all else, it's the writing that got me. Cutter has major skill, and he can craft prose that feels accessible and down to earth while still elevating to the truly literary. Big thumbs up for me.

I would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to Gallery Books for allowing me to read and review this title.

Scoutmaster Tim and his troop of five, 14-year old scouts set off on their annual wilderness campout on an island just off the coast of Prince Edward Island in Canada, but they aren’t the only ones that arrive on the island: enter “Typhoid Tom,” an unfortunate soul sick with a horrible malady. Scoutmaster Tim also happens to be PEI’s resident doctor, so naturally he feels obligated to help Tom. Contained within Tom is a highly-contagious hybridized parasite that is exceptionally skilled at finding a new home once its host has died.

A psychological and terrifying struggle for survival and rescue begins almost immediately and continues through the book until the last few pages. A gripping and easy read, incredibly descriptive and well planned with a subtle but forceful sociological commentary lying restlessly underneath. My only complaint is that Cutter is so adept at planting images in the readers mind that the animal torture passages (of which there are several) upset me to the point that I found myself having to skip those pages. However, I find it hard to criticize him for upsetting me as a reader, when his intention is clearly to disturb and horrify.

I highly recommend this book to anyone brave enough to fall into the world of this little troop. It’s a horrible, disgusting, suspenseful, heartbreaking, fantastically vivid world. I think you’ll be glad you came…and extremely glad that you got out uninfected.

Our Review, by LITERAL ADDICTION's Pack Alpha - Michelle L. Olson:
*copy gifted for an honest review

The Troop was a deeply disturbing psychological thriller, pairing the absolute terror of biological weaponry with the deviancy of human nature.

I'm a horror fan, and I didn't love The Ruins, I'll be honest. While The Troop is touted as being similar, it is, only in the sense that something MORE than natural in nature becomes the evil that our characters must face. With that said, where The Ruins let me down, The Troop most certainly did not; it's as frightful, ghastly, disturbing and macabre as I had hoped it would be.

The brilliance of the tale was its storyline simplicity - an older Boy Scout troop on a retreat get stranded on their deserted island when patient 0 from a biological research project escapes from his laboratory confines and ends up on shore. The tight box that it was all confined in allowed Cutter to focus the reader's mind on the true meat of the story - the basest instinct of human nature when faced with something so awful that most everything you've been taught flies out the window, and the psychology behind the choices we would make when forced with such a decision.

Oh yes, in-your-face death and destruction (in horrific fashion) is rampant throughout the tale, and the basis of the evil is enough to give you the willies even without the added element of necrosis, but the more disturbing parts of the story were actually the subtleties that Cutter used, and the seamless and gradual devolution and ultimate breakdown of each of the characters as the epidemic progressed.

So, from a horror junkies perspective, I have to say that I was impressed by Cutter's debut novel. It's been awhile since I read a horror that evoked a truly visceral reaction, weirded me out, and yet kept me utterly enthralled. My only complaint was that it was a bit slow. With everything that I just said above you'd think it was an epic page-turner that was over much too fast. Unfortunately it wasn't. It was timidly paced, but written well enough, and with enough induction of anticipation, that you never think to give up.

I would definitely recommend it for true horror fans who like both the revolting horror and the disturbing psychology of macabre thrillers.

I've bee reading horror books for decades. I was looking forward to finding a new horror writer and saw the glowing reviews for this book. Big mistake. While the book is OK, I had a hard time with so much animal torture and abuse. The middle of the book sagged and dragged with the weight of animal abuse and cruelty.

I will avoid this author from now on.

This was a lot grosser than I was expecting, and not in a sexy, scary or cool way. Just gross. So if you like gross as in disgusting gross go for it. If you're looking to be scared, it's not really that type of book.

i love my horror. and this has the writing. the setting and the characters. Unfortunately animal cruelty is a cheap way to make people feel unsettled. Use the writinv and buildup to cause unease not slowly torturing anjmals. Sign of an amateur

A tapeworm is a nasty, (sometimes not so) little, parasite that can infest pretty much any living thing.

That said, this was a story about a Boy Scout troop that visits an island to do their yearly Boy Scout stuff. But this will be the last trip together, ever. Can you guess why?

I had a blast with this book. It was a quick read and I loved the format in which it was told. The only issue that I had with it is that some of the characters are almost cutouts of a sort...you have the bully, the quiet kid, the fat kid, etc.. I did care for a few of the scouts and that's what made the story compelling for me. That and the reasons behind the tapeworms. Plus, there is also the writing-I liked the style a lot. I submit this quote:

"His fear was whetted to such a fine edge that he could actually feel it now: a disembodied ball of baby fingers inside his stomach, tickling him from the inside. That's what mortal terror felt like, he realized. Tiny fingers tickling you from the inside."

If you have a strong stomach and this story sounds like something that would interest you, I say give it a shot. Recommended for fans of creature features, coming of age stories and those horror fans that like a good gross out!

Simple premise. A boy scout troop on an isolated island off Prince Edward Island. A contagion spreads rampant across the island.

I'd initially wondered whether this was going to turn out to be a story for pre-teens. Uh, no. While it was mainly about kids, it was vulgar and violent at times, and definitely not geared toward kids.

My final word: Creepy and gross with a Dean Koontz-esque kind of feel, I really enjoyed this story. It's a quick read, fun and will make your skin crawl! It's rare that you find a horror novel that not only has a good plot, but is so well executed and written.

A troop of scouts are marooned on a deserted island with a deadly contagion. That's basically all you need to know without giving anything too mcuh away.

First i have to say i think this was great - a real old school horror flavour. I might have preferred it if the premise wasn’t revealed so early - i think some of the tension was lost that way, but I liked the use of official documents and other written articles. It built up the sense of dread nicely and was a interesting way of giving the back story.

This may seem odd for a horror fan but actually it was too gory in parts, to the point of gross - i actually had to put it down a few times. I won’t mark it down for that, it is a horror book after all so its meant to be scary and gross. All round an excellent body horror. 5 stars!

There’s a certain highly skilled Canadian author writing under the name “Nick Cutter” and it’s a rather appropriate name, given that “Nick’s” new book, The Troop, does involve a fair amount of cutting, and I don’t mean the kind involved in a normal Boy Scout outing. Ok, so, we’ll take it from the top. A troop of boys, led by their Scoutmaster, Tim Riggs (a doctor, by the way), is on tiny Falstaff Island for a few days of hiking, camping, and general Boy Scout fun. The problem is, a stranger has just arrived on the beach, and it’s immediately clear to Tim that something is very, very wrong. Actually, “wrong” is kind of an understatement. Something is living inside of the stranger, and it’s just dying to get out and spread it’s rather unique form of destruction. Luckily, for the stranger, Tim and his troop of five boys are the perfect breeding ground for what he carries, and he’s just dying to meet them (sorry, couldn’t help it.)

At first, Tim tries to help the man, but soon realizes that he’s wayyy beyond help. Then Tim starts feeling poorly. Then all hell pretty much starts breading loose as the boys realize that something very terrible is happening on their little island. But hey, it’ll be ok, right? Because their parents will come for them, right? Right?? It’s soon pretty evident that help isn’t coming soon, and there’s a reason for that. The island has been quarantined. Nothing in, nothing out. Doesn’t bode well for our boys, does it.

The Troop is a monster book, but this monster is a bioengineered horror that just won’t stop. As readers, we know this, because the narrative switches back and forth between the boys’ fight to survive, and case notes and newspaper articles about the horrid thing that was created in a lab and got loose via Patient Zero (the stranger). I really, realllly don’t want to get into detail about the “things” because it’s really fun, really creative, and really, really gross. What’s even scarier is that this thing was created to be used as a diet supplement, among other things (this may give you some idea of what their dealing with). Sure, you’ll lose weight. And keep losing it…you get the idea. The hunger is unstoppable. No, this isn’t a zombie book, in case you wondered. What it is, is a rather astute psychological look at what happens when you plop five young teen boys with wildly diverse personalities onto an island and have them fend for themselves. Yep, of course that’s shades of Lord of the Flies, but this is Lord of the Flies with an unspeakable twist. The “monster” is horrendous, but really, this is a great look at humankind’s capacity for cruelty and horror, which of course makes the situation that much more untenable. It also doesn’t help that one of the boys has been waiting forever to let his real personality show, and this is the perfect time to do this (this kid gets creepier than the monster at times, and that’s no easy feat.) Some sly commentary on society’s desire for a quick fix, and Cutter’s disturbingly great talent for descriptives make this a terrifying, utterly fantastic read. It’s not for the faint of heart, though. Nothing gratuitous, but some passages get pretty rough. These passages serve a distinctive purpose, though. Some horrors need to be exposed to the light of day. Nick Cutter has a sick, twisted imagination, but I like that about him, and his first foray into flat-out horror is a must read for those that like their scares smart and laced with some razor sharp social observations. If you’re familiar with “Cutter’s” other work, you know the man can write, but I bet you didn’t know he could pull this off. He can, he does, and I can’t wait for the next book.

3.5 stars

The Troop is not for the squeamish. In fact, much of it is downright disgusting. If you decide to read this book, prepare yourself for graphic, merciless descriptions of oozing sores, bloody wounds, and worms squirming into (and out of) a variety of orifices. In case you’re wondering, yes, I’m recommending this book. I do have to mention upfront several instances of animal torture. It starts off somewhat mildly with the burning of ants, but it gets much, much worse as it moves on to a mouse, a turtle, a kitten, and a chimpanzee. The scenes are written quite gleefully, and in hindsight, I don’t know why I didn’t skip over them. I had to keep reminding myself, “This is fiction,” but it was still awful to read.

In The Troop, a group of five Boy Scouts and their Scoutmaster set out for what should be an uneventful weekend of camping on a deserted island. It soon becomes very eventful when a skeletal, obviously sick man lands on the island. Tim, the Scoutmaster, is a doctor, but he has never seen an illness like the one with which this man is inflicted. His healing instincts take over, and he enlists the help of one of the boys to perform what he hopes is lifesaving surgery on the man. Unfortunately, Tim doesn’t take into account how contagious this mysterious disease may be, and it begins to spread among the members of the troop. We learn about the origin of the disease before the characters do, as occasional present-day interviews and news articles are sprinkled throughout the story.

The boys fit a little too easily into convenient cliches: the bully, the fat kid, the angry kid, the peacemaker, and the psychopath. Their interactions help to hammer these cliches home, and they’re marked by heavy doses of bullying and fighting. Still, we care about the ones we are “supposed” to care about, and we’re suitably horrified by the psychopath (who, incidentally, is responsible for some, but not all, of the animal torture.)

I continually thought of Stephen King as I read this story, and I wasn’t surprised to learn afterwards that the author is a big fan. Unlike with King’s books, however, I was never scared, but I was horrified, disgusted, repulsed, and that works just fine for me, too.

Note: I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Some may wonder why I would rate this book 5 stars.

Is it because of the characters, which for the most part, are archetypal, not to say at times almost stereotypes? I don't flaw it for that. Lots of other novels use archetypes to provoke conflicts of personality between the characters and develop action. This is used to very good effect in this novel as the boys of the boy scout troop exhibit their personalities and flaws which will be the cause of horrific conflicts between them, particularly as their sanity begins to fail.

Is it because, once it is revealed, the mal that kills and threatens to spread to everyone is horrific and disgusting beyond words? Of course. What makes it all the worse is that Nick Cutter's monster is entirely plausible in our modern world of genetically manipulated organisms. Of course, the author carries his idea to its extreme in the events that unfold but that is what horror is about, right?

In fact, the main reason why I thought this work deserved 5 stars was in its execution. Nick Cutter admits that he adopted the style of Stephen King's [book:Carrie] in this book, effectively paying hommage to the great horror master. In doing so, he is able to gradually reveal the extent of the horror concerning the unfolding events. By intercutting the terrifying events lived by the boys on the isolated island holding them prisoner with newspaper clippings, reports, and interviews, he gradually provides the complete picture and keeps the reader interested until the end.

And I, for one, love that!

Right off the bat we are introduced to a creepy character who must keep eating to fill a hole or something. Doesn't even have to be food. From the thought provoking descriptions Cutter was able to capture my full attention with a death grip. I had to know what happened to this man, where he came from and most importantly what in the hell is going on.

Here we have a story that is about a simple unassuming boy scout camping trip to a remote island. Isolated from the outside world by the ocean. They think that they have everything they could need to make the trip a success, until the hungry man shows up. Then everything goes haywire. The troop leader and his son try to help the man, they realize that they must operate in order to save his life. This is where they are confronted with something so unimaginable and so terrifying that they do know what to do, other than to not get any on them. Well, they did and the story blows up from there.

My hat is off to Nick Cutter as I never had to stop listening to audiobook just because I was too creeped out to continue. The Troop is hands down the epitome of a horror story. It has everything a horror fan will want, monsters that are monsters and that are the people themselves. With suburb character development, to the point where you think you know them very well and then you don't.

Audiobook provided for review by the publisher.

Please find this complete review and many others at audiobookreviewer dot com

With all the hype and all the zombies+Lord of Flies+old school horror talk I was really excited to read this. Unfortunately I was just as excited to finish it so I could move on to something else.

What I liked:
The first 1/2 of the book. Cutter sets the stage quite well introducing the characters, developing them, and setting up the monster/horror aspects.

What I was disappointed in:
The monster is not a real factor until the last 50 pages or so. The effect of this decision is that most of the tension developed in the first 150 pages dissipates by the time of threat really shows up. When you have a low number of characters the only way to maintain tension is to have the "big bad" be omnipresent. In 'The Shining,' there were 3 characters/victims but the house (big bad) was omnipresent. Instead of tension related to a monster we have tension related survival, and mental anguish over extreme events. That's all well and good in a character study but it's not all that great when I am looking to be scared.

Verdict: It's fine and the writing is good which keeps you engaged but, as stated, overall it's more gorey than scary.

I have never read such an oddly satisfying, disgustingly horrifying book. I WILL NOT recommend this book to anyone, just because I don't wish nightmares on them as I did for myself. This book is just great.

I’m just now starting to delve into NetGalley, after having signed up over two years ago without actually using it. I had The Troop on my TBR list and was pretty excited that my request was accepted. The rough copy of the book took some getting used to. But I understand that it’s an ARC copy so I eventually got over the weird formatting and lack of editing. I briefly skimmed over other reviews and came away with a wide range of likes and dislikes people had while reading. I don’t like to do too much research on a book before reading because I like to go in with a “clean slate”. Anyhow, I had some prior knowledge on what to expect – gory details, animal abuse, something shocking/disturbing. What I got out of The Troop are exactly these things and more! However, I felt the execution and character depth were both lacking and I honestly had a tough time staying interested at times.

While the sense of honor and duty within the Boy Scouts can be found in some passages, I never really got a sense that this rag-tag group of kids and their Scoutmaster were ever truly connected. They had years of history together but I was quite shocked by how quickly things fell apart for all of them. The friendship and family-like bond was pretty much non-existent. I also had a hard time connecting to any of the cookie-cutter characters. Each boy had personalities that were very distinct and different but none of them truly stood out. Their personalities were a little too cliché and I found it hard to care much about them, or what happened to them.

But was I scared? Hell yeah! But I was more scared of the reality of the plot. Icky germs, parasitic worms and viruses, things that do nothing but eat, breed, and destroy, diseases that spread regardless of safety precautions all tend to freak me out. It’s always the unseen enemy that can do the worst and isn’t it always the unknown that scares us the most? The fact that the evil in this book isn’t a psychopathic serial killer, mutant monster, flesh-eating zombie, or creepy alien scares the crap out of me. Did the author actually scare me through his writing? Eh, not really. While I appreciated his overly very dramatic metaphors and detailed scenes I was never really engaged enough to be truly scared by the actual delivery.

Nick Cutter is a pseudonym and I couldn’t figure out who he was until I read a review on Goodreads that stated he put his real name on the copyright page. Very cute. So now that I know about “Mr. Cutter’s” other work I’d very much like to try it out. Some readers won’t like the detail of some of the scenes or the animal abuse/experimentation in The Troop. And while I didn’t get a true sense of horror I still thought it was a good story. Would I read it again? Probably not, but I’m not sorry that I did read it. Although I did lose interest a time or two during my reading I still enjoyed the book overall. The way the story was told through the narrative and through an outside perspective was actually pretty cool. To make the bigger picture make more sense clues were dispersed in front of some chapters. These could be found in the form of interviews, news bulletins, diary entries, court evidence and documents, etc. These elements helped make sense of what the boys were going through on the isolated island. So I definitely say give this one a go, maybe by borrowing, to see if you’d like to give it a permanent home on your bookshelf.

** I received an ecopy of this book in exchange for an honest review **

"The Troop" is a highly intelligent and polished horror novel written in the style and quality of literary prose in some ways while at the same time being entertaining and engaging.

There are five boys and one scoutmaster on a small part of Prince Edward Island in Canada. A very sick man comes to the island. It's not difficult to see where this is going. However, each character has complex sub layers beneath the surface. Each of them is distinct and unique and your emotions will be played with by each of them. Also? Not all of the boys are good. Shelly is downright creepy–let’s just say he could give the Joker a run for his money. He defines the term ‘twisted’.

Despite the fact that the reader knows from the outset that every single one of these people is doomed, the question becomes who’s the first to go, under what circumstances, and of course, who survives? Who makes it to the finish line? Does anyone make it out alive?

I can say without any exaggeration that every horror fan must read this book even if they’re not really fans of science-related horror or they think it won’t be their thing. It’s a gripping story that will win over even the most reluctant reader. This is the kind of book that will make horror fans say, “This is what I’ve been waiting for.”

I like a good horror novel and am not at all put off by the gross factor, which this story has plenty of… but when animal torture is a theme throughout the book, well, whatever merits the plot may have get thrown out in the recycle bin with the rest of the book.

If the hairs on the back of your tongue haven’t been properly stood on end for a while, then it is your civic duty to read THE TROOP. The name “Nick Cutter,” put forward as the author of this terrifying piece, is a pseudonym for “an acclaimed author of novels and short stories.” I was initially certain that it was someone who Cutter acknowledges at the end of the novel, and who has contributed a fine and complimentary blurb as well. Regardless of who wrote the book, it is an edge-of-your-seat, one-sit read with a fright factor of 10 and a gross-out factor of 11, though not gratuitously so. More on that in a moment.

The troop of the title is five boy scouts and their scoutmaster who are making an annual overnight camping sojourn to a local island. It’s perfect, given that it’s isolated with few creature comforts and is easily accessible by boat should something go wrong. The scoutmaster, Tim Riggs, is a good guy, a family practice physician who knows his limitations and has some limited insight into his charges, each of whom is, shall we say, somewhat differently talented. Cutter paints with a broad brush here in defining each of the boys --- the natural leader; the introvert; the quiet but intelligent lad; the solid, average kid; and, oh yeah, the freaking psychopath --- whose varied abilities rub easily and otherwise against each other over the course of the book.

What happens within hours of the troop landing on the island isn’t covered in the Boy Scout Manual. A man obviously in some distress arrives by boat near their campsite. Dr. Tim attempts to come to his assistance, but the stranger, who physically looks like a war refugee, is beyond help. He is hungry, and voraciously so. It is here that the gross-out factor begins to kick in. The stranger proceeds to devour everything in sight (I assure you, he’s worse than your brother-in-law on an overnight calorie bender), and I mean everything. There is a reason for this, which is gradually made clear over the course of the story. Cutter goes over the top in his description of some everyday bodily functions, but they are ones that we never think about, even as they occur. It’s not horror for horror’s sake; everything that Cutter describes has a reason for being there, which doesn’t make it any easier to take.

Of course, I loved every word of it, even as Cutter managed to touch on both of my phobias (arachnophobia and claustrophobia) and a whole bunch of other ones. I won’t go into detail as to what occurs, but there are any number of things you won’t be able to eat, look at, or participate in without thinking of this book. These would include, to name but a few: fishing, gardening, boats, spelunking, pasta and Mexican diet clinics. Oh, and turtles. Yes, bad things happen to the troop, so bad in fact that the military surrounds the island and won’t let anyone off, at least until it is much too late. And even after it’s over, it’s not really over. For me, the big shock is what occurs near the end.

THE TROOP is simply great stuff. The horror genre never really went away, but it’s nice (maybe “nice” isn’t quite the right word) to see a potential resurgence of its once massive literary popularity. If you haven’t had a tremendous scare for a while, read this book. And keep that bottle of hand sanitizer at the ready.

Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

Gave up with 75 pages left. Got tired of having monster worms decribed to me over and over and over. Same with
gross, discusting descriptions of human bodies rotting and falling apart. If you are the type that is scared by this
kind of thing,enjoy being scared and don't mind continually wandering far afield of the weak story plot then this
is for you. Me.......I found myself skimming whole pages trying to advance with the story plot. This guys next book
should be centered in a leper colony where he could write 400 pages decribing body parts rotting and falling
off. The story plot? Eh! Unimportant details!

I’m sorry to say that this novel is just not for me. Truth be told, I was not ready for the graphic, nauseating images that are released on readers in this one. Nor was I ready for the awful animal abuse described. This is a very graphic novel, and it made me ill–especially in terms of the worms and the psychotic/sociopathic nature of some of the Troop (Shelley) that is brought to light before everything even begins to go downhill . Things go from bad to worse quickly in this novel, and while it was interesting in the beginning, it ended up making me physically nauseous at times, and turned me into a bit of a hypochondriac as I read. I really enjoyed the concept behind it, but didn’t care for any of the characters–they’re all kind of jerks–and absolutely hated the sections where the lab documented the test subjected on the animals. Wow. Animal abuse is not okay, and I had a really hard time reading a lot of these scenes.

For me, the novel wasn’t a scary read by any means—instead, I found it disturbing and, as I’ve said, overly graphic. Because of this, I don’t have a set group I’d recommend this novel to. I enjoyed Lord of the Flies, which is one of the reasons I picked up this novel to begin with (the other was the original cover, but it’s since been changed to this more drab, bloody one), so I can’t say that if you enjoyed The Lord of the Flies, you’ll enjoy this one, but perhaps you will. Just go into this novel knowing that, while very well written, it deals with graphic blood and gore, animal abuse, and disturbing images.

The Troop is an absolutely stunning gem that should not be missed by horror fanatics and gorehounds. Filled with gross out gore, violence, terror, insanity, desolation, depression, and a loss of hope - The Troop is a perfectly written, marvelous novel.

You hope for a savior. You hope for peace. You hope... for HOPE itself. Be warned. Push your stomach to handle it and remember don't let IT touch you.

I have just bought this book and it is so annoying that I nearly stopped reading it. Why? Well for two things. One, The author is continually jumping to irrelevant things and describing them in detail no doubt trying to be clever and two, as for similies - if he had invented the word 'like' I would not have been surprised.

Not as good as some are making out. Give it a miss.

Creepy, creepy, creepy. At first it is the thought of a womr crwaling inside of you and consuming you; forcing you feed rather than eat. On top of that, add the idea of a government that supports a supe-vector and then sprinkle the hidden lives of adolescent boys. A page-turner and storyline that is a little bit of Stephen King's "The Body," for its clarity of dialogue and character development with the gruesomeness of a Hollywood horror film.

I actually don't know what to say! While not for the very young, the squeamish, nor the highly suggest-able, I literally couldn't put it down. I had to know what happened next, despite the fact I wasn't sure I wanted to know. This was the first time I have ever read a book while peeking through my fingers like a child at a scary movie. Mr. Cutter's style of writing carries you along with or without your cooperation, so do grab tight your sanity and prepare to be horrified.

Did you like Lord of the Flies? Read this.
Do you enjoy reading about biological warfare and out of control lab experiments? Read this.
Do you enjoy reading about psychopaths? Read this.
Gross infection? Read this.
Terrifying, creepy, graphically gruesome books recommended by Stephen King?
READ. THIS.

♪♫Nobody likes me/Everybody hates me/Guess I’ll go eat worms♪♫

Five teenage Boy Scouts and their Scoutmaster, Dr. Tim Riggs, are on an annual wilderness survival weekend on the tiny uninhabited Falstaff Island, Prince Edward Island. They’ve done this before. Everything was always okay.

Until this trip.

An emaciated stranger shows up in the night and he’s so hungry. Scoutmaster Tim is wary of this stranger; but, he’s a doctor and there is something drastically wrong with this man. Why is he so hungry? Did I just see him eating dirt? He has to help him.

Within hours of the stranger’s arrival utter and terrifying chaos ensues. Scoutmaster Tim falls ill and the boys are left to their own devices~~some honorable, some evil. Where are the adults? Why aren’t any adults coming to help? Why are they so hungry? Why does that black helicopter keep flying over the island? What is making everyone so sick? Nothing could have prepared these Boy Scouts for this weekend in the wilderness.

Nothing.

You’ll get to know Kent, Ephraim, Max, Newton and Shelley~~the Boy Scouts. Some you’ll love. Some you’ll hate. One in particular you’ll wish you’d never let get in your head. And he will get in your head.

Told in vivid, gory detail with excerpts from case files, you will be absolutely sickened and still find yourself turning pages. If you’re a fan of horror~~and I mean HORROR~~then this book is for you. Creepy on crack! The author, “Nick Cutter”, is either demented or he’s been kidnapped by aliens or something and returned to earth with sick ideas implanted in his brain. (Just one theory.) Whomever “Nick Cutter” really is (he’s writing under a pen name) I’d like to thank him for the nightmares. I’ve had many since reading this book. Maybe what scares me the most is the possibility of something like this happening. Science is awfully close to horror.

Warning~~if you are sensitive to animal abuse, you will want to go into this book prepared to come across it in disgusting detail.

4.5 ✰’s

This book was provided by the Publisher through NetGalley. The opinions above are my own.

First of all, this book is not for the faint of heart. You really have to like a good gory horror story because this is one of them. I loved it! Mr. Cutter, please reveal yourself and take credit where credit is due. You have written an excellent story of horror, experiments gone wrong, and overall creepiness. Would recommend to those of you fellow readers who love to get the bejeezus scared out of you.

Well, don't read this before sending your son off to scout camp but read it after he is home safe and sound!! Very exciting read! I would recommend this for anyone who loves a good Stephen King-like read.

I was asked to review an ARC, and the book was pitched to me as a zombie novel. It is NOT a zombie story...not even in the sense of living infected, such as 28 Days Later. It is a story about a science experiment gone awry, and several boyscouts who become unwilling test subjects.

The foreshadowing, or the jumps back and forth in time, absolutely ruined the suspense for me. It was like reading a book filled with spoilers. I read The Troop from beginning to end because it's my policy when reviewing books to read the entire novel, but there was no other incentive, having had the ending revealed to me before I reached the actual end of the story. I don't have a problem with manipulating a story's timeline in general, but not when it comes to revealing major plot points.

I'm not surprised that Stephen King liked this book because the slow pace reminded me of King's book, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, which was also painfully slow-reading (and quite boring). I kept waiting for something scary to happen in The Troop...no such luck. There is a difference between writing horror, and writing gore: one frightens readers, the other just grosses them out. In that resepect, The Troop was definitely disgusting.

If you like reading stories that make you want to vomit, by all means, read The Troop, but if you are a true horror fan, consider passing on this novel. Especially if you are a zombiephile. (If you are used to reading authors like Brian Keene or Joe McKinney, Nick Cutter is not going to do it for you.)

I read this because I'm involved in Scouting, and thought a good, scary, "campfire story" -about- Scouts would be fun to read... this one wasn't. If one likes blood, vomit, parasites and the mutilation of young boys, then you'll certainly find them in this book. I prefer more psychological/intellectual horror stories, with some suspense. I did read the entire book, hoping that it would improve as it went, but I just found myself alternating between grossed out and bored. While this might appeal to boys of Scouting age, where trying to "gross each other out", is standard practice at times, I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone of that age group. Obviously other reviewers, who are interested in the gore aspect, liked it, but for anyone looking at it because of it's inclusion of Scouting, this would not be a good choice.

While I really enjoyed the author's writing style and couldn't put the book down I felt it was very mediocre. I plan on giving his next book a shot on July 28th. I wouldn't recommend this book if you are squeamish or are sensitive to animal abuse. A lot of it was even cringe worthy to me which is pretty hard.

I like gooey, disturbing horror. I like all sorts of horror, as long as it's done right and as long as it does the things it's supposed to do for the genre or even the sub genre. So this one was a mashup of The Thing and The Ruins and boy's adventure novels. It was a trip. Highly recommended. Lovers of David Cronenberg and people who are icked out by things happening to the human body will love (or I guess hate) this book. Looking forward to reading more of this guy's work.

Well written, but this book will depress you.

I guess Nick Cutter enjoys writing about 14 year old children being tortured.

Also. I believe this author did not do his research. No troop of boys will ever be left alone for a weekend with 1 adult. I am sure scout policy dictates that at least 2 adults be present at all times.

Well written, well developed story. The various points of view (the story, the trial, the article) were well done as well. The characters and their motivations are all believable. I would say that the gore level is pretty high, but I didn't think it was unnecessary or excessive, but if you're used to nothing grosser than King you may be put off. It is a great first novel. I can't wait for his next!

My biggest problem with this book is that there exists not one truly likable character, someone the reader can really root for. Maybe the nerdy kid, but they're all cliched characters that never really interested me or made me care about them. In fact, mostly they were annoying and unlikable. I've seen Stephen King's name thrown around a lot in these reviews, and while genre comparisons are fine, King's true storytelling prowess exists in his strong, believable and memorable characters, both heroes and villains. No matter how far out there King goes with a story, his characters are what makes even his craziest story lines somehow believable. I can remember caring so deeply for some of his characters over his many books (I've read them all, btw) and with every turn of the page just praying he wouldn't kill him/her off. That's storytelling at its finest.

Cutter has gotten off to a good, if not great start, and I'd definitely be interested in his next offering, but this one left me a bit cold. It was just too mean-spirited and filled with uninteresting characters.

Horrible. Formulaic. Tacky. Boring. No plot. Story done 100 times over. The actual writing of the book was alright but the story was so bland and rehashed from a million different other horror stories. This is just a fictionalized wannabe shock value mystery, if you want real horror or real shock, read Wrath James White, this is just another run of the mill boring bland "horror" marketed towards scaring house wives. Cannot stress enough how boring this was. Even the "gross" parts were not very gross, you see worse stuff on the news daily.

Everyone else has already said it but this is not for the faint of heart. So if blood (alot) and guts (WAY more than alot) are not your thing, this one is not for you. The writing is solid and the story kept my interest. I liked the use of interspersed news articles and court transcripts sprinkled throughout. There were some genuine hair raising scenes especially when you find out there may be more than one monster on the island. I look forward to the next Nick Cutter horror tale.

This book was pretty interesting, and it had a good storyline; however, it wasn't the scariest story I've ever read. It kept my attention and I wanted to see what happened to the boys so I kept on reading. I think this author has potential. But he is not a Stephen King.

The Troop follows a fascinating trend in apocalyptic pandemics where what begins as harmless falls prey to the machinations of businesses and governments. Cutter connects this concept with acerbic commentary on the greed that drives genetic manipulations. His brilliant portrayal of fear, the unspeakable actions of the infected, paired with realistic descriptions create a haunting novel. —Bloggers Recommend

this was a real thriller. the pictures painted by the author made it so real you could hear and invision the gruesome disease and it's gradual infestation. I look forward to reading more from him. I have been a longtime reader of the works of Stephen King and I think that even the master of horror would have enjoyed this book.

When they said this novel was part Lord of the Flies-- they were right. Read page 68's description of Kent and then read Golding's description of Ralph in chapter one. Cutter's character, Newt, is a pudgy outcast described as "piglet pink" and asthmatic. Remind you of anyone else you've read about? I was disappointed to see that Cutter borrowed so freely from the classic novel.

This book is phenomenal. Some of the most grotesque body horror I've ever read...and the writing style is just so fluid, it struck such dark, wonderful chords with me. I can honestly say this is one of the best horror novels I've read this year (or ever, really)

And just for the record, Shelley Longpre will forever haunt my dreams (with and without the worms :p)

Mark Twain once said that the only persons allowed to refer to themselves as “we” were a newspaper editor, the Queen of England, and a man with a tapeworm. A group of boy scouts meet the third on a remote island in Nick Cutter’s The Troop, and the tapeworm is very, very hungry. This debut horror novel is intelligent, provocative and unsettling: think Lord of the Flies meets Steven King.

The Troop almost defies categorization. It is a horror story that could too easily happen. The author uses a variety of devices to introduce, entertain and inform the reader. It is easy to develop understanding and empathy with the characters. The suspense continues to build as the reader wonders how this could happen and who, if anyone, will survive. The Troop is a well-told, but different tale. Unlike so many other horror stories, this one could really happen. Nothing supernatural is involved.

A strange and very hungry man stumbles into the encampment of a Boy Scout Troop spending a weekend on an island in the Canadian Wilderness. It's just a matter of time before 'what's eating the man' is out and passing among the Troop with deadly efficiency.

Reminiscent of everything from the original THE THING to Scott Smith's THE RUINS, THE TROOP is an unsettling thriller which will shock and disturb. Another example of mankind trying to control science for their own gain only to have it backfire on them in a horrific manner.

As a former boy scout, I burned through this book with delight. It is a graphic representation of one of those campfire stories we used to tell to scare one another on weekend trips. A great read overall. Highly recommended.

This novel was very well written by the author, but should come with some warnings about non-sexual graphic material. I thoroughly enjoyed the storyline, characters, and natural flow of the book! Nice work!

This book was more than just another scary story.
This is horror on a visceral level. Its disturbing.
It will effect you in a way a lot of these types of books
try to do but fail. I am not overstating this.

As another reviewer said, its a slow motion train wreck
that you cant look away from. It gets bad and then it gets
much worse.

I gave it 5 stars because as horror story, its more
than effective. It will make your skin crawl.

This is a horror story that has a hint of validity to it making it even more terrifying. It is an incredibly fast read as it is so difficult to put down. It is like Stephen King meets Lord of the Flies.

This book was a great read. At first the book went a little slow for me but turn out really good and not what I expected. I like books that keep me thinking what's going to happen next or who's going to do what and so on.

PJV Quickie: THE TROOP has all the elements of a brilliant horror novel and all the wrong proportions to make it work. As is, it’s too gory and morally disturbing for the YA audience. I’d recommend this book only to adults who specifically like their books bloody enough to satisfy a vampire’s thirst.

Review: THE TROOP is told through not only the POVs of the characters on the island, but also through interviews conducted after the events on the island occur. The interviews explaining the events occurring outside the island offered a chilling glimpse into how grim the situation is for the five boys and their scoutmaster. After the infected man came in contact with them they might as well each have taken a bullet to the head and ended their misery right then.

What bothered me most about the book was the frequent pauses in the story to explain the characters’ back stories. It made the novel have the pacing of a man crawling across the floor after being shot in both kneecaps and his abdomen.

Yes, that slow.

The slower pace diluted the psychological horror aspect, that the interview scenes set up, to the point where the gory scenes only had pure shock-value to keep the reader reading. The gore was so intense at times that I started skimming. I don’t watch most modern horror movies specifically because I can’t handle gore upon gore.

I think the biggest obstacle THE TROOP faces is the conflict between its targeted audience of YA and the repeated acts of animal cruelty within its pages. Besides giving PETA members nightmares, these scenes will sicken most readers to the point where they will stop reading. One of the torture scenes was so gory and heartless that I had to skip to the end of the chapter. I love my gore, but I can’t tolerate what this kid did to poor Fluffy.

The setup and characters of the novel do remind me of several Stephen King novels. The sensation of absolute isolation is perfectly portrayed. THE TROOP reminds me of a YA version of DREAMCATCHER (only without the aliens — still trying to figure out why King thought spontaneously adding aliens made sense). Nick Cutter has true talent in horror, but he needs to lessen up on the animal cruelty and gore if he wants to attract anyone but hardcore horror fans to his books.

(I received a copy from the author in exchange for my honest review.)

I had no idea, until reading some of the other reviews, that this was a book aimed at "young adults". I bought it at a local brick-and-mortar, and nothing there -- or even online here at the store -- indicates that at all. Even the "reviews" by people like Stephen King do nothing to make that clear.

Unfortunately, I didn't read those the store reviews until AFTER I'd already bought and read this book, and therefore I'm going to review it just as I would any other book for ADULTS, because I suspect a lot of other people are going to end up doing the same thing I did.

I found the writing style to be simplistic and trite, with shallow characterizations -- to the point of cliche -- and little depth or complexity.

The plot was also simplistic, though somewhat reminiscent of early Dean Koontz in the juxtaposition of "mad science" and "thriller" elements. But not nearly as well-executed.

I can see where this book might have appeal for teens. For adults? No. It's kind of like the difference between the Hardy Boys books and the Dave Robicheaux books. Which are you going to read if you're a grown-up?

I don’t generally read horror, so I was admittedly nervous starting The Troop. While the suspense and, at times, gruesome events left me feeling perpetually ill-at-ease…I think that’s kind of the point…and I loved it! Like good books should, this one stuck with me – not only because of the fright factor, but because it is so incredibly well done. The Troop is one of the best books I’ve read and is one that I would recommend to any reader – not just those who traditionally enjoy horror/suspense.

This book was one of the best horror novels I have read in years! I was reading it alone in my apartment, and jumped twenty feet in the air at a random noise in my living room. The story is engrossing and I couldn't stop reading until I knew how it ended. I want them to make a movie out of it!

The Troop is easily one of the scariest books I've ever read but it's also one of the best! If you love scary movies or novels you need to read this book! Fair warning, you should read this book with all the lights on!

I picked up The Troop for a little light subway reading, and two days and several nightmares later, I finished it. It is fantastically gripping, gruesome, and terrifying. Beyond just shock horror, the psychological component of the book is almost scarier than the eventual menace. The boys are wonderfully drawn, and the writing completely elevates the genre. Lord of the Flies meets Stephen King in this killer new horror novel.

Started it on a plane trip last weekend. Didn't move a muscle for the entire trip--and didn't eat anything! Just kept turning the pages. The kids in the Troop are vividly drawn, as is Padgett, and what happens inside them is the stuff of great horror writing.

I was drawn into the book by the cool cover at the bookstore, that dusty red and minimalist look, so I started browsing it. And couldn't sleep until I finished it...and then I couldn't sleep because I'd finished it. Definitely old school horror that's wildly page-turning.

Loved the cover, loved the concept, so I picked it up. I started reading it that night - big mistake, because I couldn't get the story out of my mind when I went to bed! I had to get up and read more, eventually had to force myself to go to bed, and finished it the next day. The story has stayed in my mind ever since, and I may never go camping again...

Not only was this book not scary, it was predictable and slow. I do not normally write reviews but feel I must because I was duped by all the positive reviews.
I am not a professioal book critic but I do read allot and I will not recomend this book.