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Title: Torture Porn
Review: The plot--and the deficiencies therein--of The Ruins, by Scott Smith, have been recounted by other reviews effectively, so I'll try not to be redundant.The good--Smith is a quick read, and, for a story that doesn't move much from a single location, that's an accomplishment.What I have to add to the bad--first, a strange choice for a title. The story barely has anything to do with ruins.Second, The Ruins is bascially yet another installment with the horror genre's recent infatuation with torture porn. Don't worry, gentle reader, The Ruins is softcore when it comes down to it, but the concept is really the same: isolate some young people and make horrible things happen to them.Third, the epilogue of the book, which is supposed to leave us with a creepy feeling as we put it down is so wildly implausible it just didn't work for me.Average work, at best.
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