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Title: Don't Waste Your Time
Review: This is one of those books I wish I'd stopped reading about halfway through. It's boring. It's predictable. The four American characters are indistinguishable from each other. A half-hearted attempt is made to imply that one of the group that sets forth for the ruins might not be all that they seem, but it never goes anywhere. And the writing itself is paltry. Very little description of the world which resulted in my never crossing that boundary where you start to live out the events happening in the book. It was always just words on a page. Plants are green and red. A hat is blue. Someone has curly brown hair. It's pretty plain. But my biggest complaint is that Smith TELLS us everything. Very little is SHOWN. The end effect is like listening to a very long-winded acquaintance tell you about the bad vacation of someone they know. "The Ruins" gets my vote for the most overrated book of 2006.
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