Book Review: The Troop by Nick Cutter
The Lord of the Fl The Troop follows a small troop of scouts and their leader during a camping weekend gone horribly wrong.
Is it a spoiler to say that
I fear it is, so I’ll wrap it up in a spoiler button and try not to mention it in this review.
In fact, I fear that talking about this book in any way will give away key plot points that are best left to the reader to discover.
Be advised, this is a review you’re better to read after reading the book.
Nick Cutter’s The Troop reads like a mashup of Lord of the Flies and Dreamcatcher. No it’s not an exact match for either of those books, nor does it steal their stories, but it does match up two incongruent things.
We’re not just dealing with a monster here. We’re dealing with man himself. Both are equally evil and life-consuming.
The battle encompasses all of the literary conflicts: man vs. man, man vs. nature, man vs. society, man vs. self, and man vs. technology.
It’s like a buy-one-get-one-free book. You buy The Troop for the monster scares, and get a slew of societal scares for the same great price.
My only beef: some of the boys devolve into sneering, power hungry miscreants the moment adult authority is compromised. Would it really go downhill that quickly?
What is believable: the malfeasance by those in power. Ethics? They don’t need no stinkin’ ethics. Talk about the rise of power-hungry miscreants the moment authority’s head is turned…
Maybe the author isn’t too far off the path with the boys’ downfall after all.
