I'm a fan of J.A. Konrath, as much for what he has done to blaze a trail for independent authors as for the books he writes, and I must admit to spending time on his blog and chuckling at his often hilarious maulings of those he disagrees with.

I've already read a few of his novels, mostly those written under the pen name Jack Kilborn, and found them to be genuine page turners, full of suspense and fun, and that's exactly what I got with Origin.

The plot revolves around the discovery of something demonic during the building of the Panama canal, and the subsequent cover up by the US government. In present day, we follow Andy, a linguist, who has been dragged into the secretive Project Samhain and tasked with communicating with the now-awake demonic something in an underground base.

Disclaimer: I fricking love underground bases. You could pretty much set every novel ever written in an underground base and improve it, right?

Er...right?

Anyway, Origin is pretty high-concept stuff, which I guess is classic Konrath, and it makes for a really entertaining read. Lots of nice comic touches and characterisation in the first half of the novel (including the developing relationship between Andy and Sunshine Jones, which is at times laugh-out-loud funny) but the reader always has that sense of dread that the characters are playing with fire, and will surely get burned. 

There were a few detours into theology and history that felt a little like Konrath really wanted the reader to know that he had done his research, and I found some of these sections interesting, but they did slow the action down a little for me. But Konrath is a storyteller first and foremost, and the story here, though occasionally predictable, never stopped being fun. 

Not as 'horror' as some of his other work despite the occasional foray into gore, and definitely not as suspenseful, but a really fun read, and I got through it in no time.

Loved the ending, too. The novel equivalent of dropping the microphone and marching offstage. Great stuff.

Recommended, but if you're new to Konrath/Kilborn's work, I'd definitely advise starting off with Endurance or Afraid before giving Origin a shot.

3.5/5

I'm on a roll with short, nasty horrors with punchy titles. Following The Ruins and The Ritual, I found my way to The Troop by Nick Cutter, and it's a winner.

The first thing to say is that I didn't find The Troop especially scary or spooky, but I did find it thrilling and intense. And disgusting. Cutter's got a real flair for the wet stuff. Things might get a little spoiler-y from here on in, so if you want the short version without spoilers, read no further than this: a scout troop trapped on an isolated island with a hungry something. In all honesty, Cutter had me at 'trapped'. Throwing in hungry-somethings just confirms that I'm gonna love it.

So, the spoiler - the hungry something in this book is one of nature's best little eating machines, and a creature I can't remember coming across in a horror before: the tapeworm.

Or, in this case: genetically modified ubertapeworm :D

I love a little conspiracy in my horror stories, and The Troop has it in abundance, excellently delivered by interview segments that break up the narrative flow and lend a real sense of mystery and foreboding to the action.

The characters: five boys and their scoutmaster, are really well drawn, and believable in their slide toward Lord of the Flies-style chaos. The pace is pretty relentless, and mostly the actions of the characters are believable. Occasionally I found the characters' viewpoints a little jarring - for young teenage boys, some of these kids sure do ponder things in an eloquent philosophical manner. That pulled me out of the action a little, but it's a very minor complaint, and never stops the prose being eminently readable.

If there's one thing I absolutely hated though, it's the animal cruelty. That's a weird thing for somebody who routinely tortures his own characters in horrific ways to say, but something about cruelty to animals just makes me an unhappy reader. That's not to say the scenes involving animals are particularly out of place in The Troop, or even badly done-they're not-and they are very important to establishing a couple of the characters. In fact, those awful scenes excellently written, and two sequences in particular - involving a kitten and a turtle - punched me in the gut about as hard as a book can. So, I didn't *like* it, and it made me squirm, but I can't fault Cutter for that: The Troop is a horror that, at times, is heartbreakingly horrific.

Well worth a read, but if you like kittens, prepare yourself.

4/5.

Oh, yeah, now we're talking. The Ritual is something of a book of two halves, but well worth reading because one of those halves is roughly 150 pages of the best horror money can buy.

This is a tale of survival, as four old friends reunite for a camping/hiking trip in a deserted part of Sweden. After attempting to take a shortcut through some uncharted forest, the group finds that this most deserted part of the world isn't deserted at all. Something else is in the forest...and it's hungry :D

It's rare for me to find a book that grips almost from the first word, but The Ritual grabbed me immediately and refused to let go. The first part of the book, as the four friends are hunted in the dark by something terrible, is fantastic. If you were a fan of The Blair Witch Project in the slightest, this book will resonate, and provide another damn good reason to stay away from the woods at all costs. Hell, I've got one tree in my garden, and right now I DON'T TRUST IT. Yeah, tree, I'm talking to you. You leafy bastard.

The characters are likeable, and their slow deterioration as they confront something far beyond their understanding is expertly handled. These are old university friends whose lives have moved in different directions over the intervening years, and the strain this puts on their relationships is believable and compelling.

And then there's the forest. Oh lordy. The grim mysteries of the forest are chilling and enthralling. The Ritual didn't produce surprise or fright so much as inspire crawling dread. One scene, in which the four friends wake up to find that *something* has happened to each of them while they slept, is excellent and genuinely unsettling.

Had this book simply stopped at the halfway point, it would be a solid 5 star horror masterpiece for me.

As it is, The Ritual almost seems like two books shoehorned together. The second half is not bad, not by any means, but it introduces a new plot and some new characters which, while fine in itself and well worth reading, suffers by comparison to the sheer sweaty adrenaline rush of the opening chapters. 

Hard to go into the plot any further without spoilers, so I'll finish by saying that this was one of the creepiest books I can remember reading in a long time. Take it camping with you, read it in a tent by torchlight, and lose your mind with terror.

Highly recommended. 4/5.

The Ruins by Scott Smith

I owe my reading of this book to Goodreads - which I'm finally getting the hang of as an awesome way to get recommendations for new horror books to read :D

I picked The Ruins primarily because I watched the film version a few years back and remember it being a notch or two better than most horror films, but that is both a blessing and a curse, really, because I think it...er...ruined (see what I did there? So proud!) what may have been a few of the book's more effective surprises for me.

The Ruins was a Good Read (Again? Puntastic! Okay, I'll stop now) but perhaps not the high point in horror literature I hoped it would be. The tale of a group of young Americans vacationing in Mexico, who follow a German they meet on a quest to find his brother, who has been lost somewhere in the jungle. Naturally, what they find puts them in mortal danger.

The Ruins is eminently readable, and does include a few sequences that were genuinely squirm-inducing. It also makes good use of the sort of low grade fear associated with being lost in a foreign country and struggling with language barriers and a general lack of knowledge. Having wandered off the beaten track while abroad myself, I was easily able to identify with the tension and helplessness of being lost.

My major problem was with the characters, who I found to be pretty dislikable on the whole. This may well have been the point, and I suspect Smith's intention was to show just how badly prepared this group of pampered people (two young couples, along with the German and a Greek friend who tagged along) was when faced with a situation beyond their control. Forced to survive while being trapped in a dangerous part of the jungle by hostile locals, the breakdown of morale, mental stability and logic is pretty swift. The way the characters react is almost wholly negative, and it isn't long before they begin to turn on each other.

There are good ideas in The Ruins, and some highly effective gross-out moments, in particular a sequence involving one man and his knife which will linger in the memory. However, there are also a few plot points that didn't quite work for me, most notably the moment at which the non-human adversary that the group is dealing with becomes sentient. It works, but it requires a pretty big suspension of disbelief.

All that said, The Ruins was a quick read, and something of a page turner, and I'd recommend it, particularly if you haven't already seen the film. 3/5.