Blurb: Once every 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.
Review: A group of five boys and their Scoutmaster try to help a desperately sick man when he shows up at their weekend island camp. The sickness is beyond anything natural and spreads to each new victim. Those infected become incredibly hungry and will do anything to get something to eat. Even if that food isn't really food. With the island under quarantine, the boys must fight for their lives, but can they win a battle against this horror?
This is a well-written and grim horror that didn't so much scare me as gross me out. The 'monster' in this story is a bioengineered tapeworm. That doesn't sound frightening, but the mutated parasite not only eats you from the inside out, it gets into your head and makes you see things. It's a great tool to help with the psychological terror which is what this book mostly consists of. The Scoutmaster dies early on and leaves the boys to fend for themselves. That alone would be enough for a good scary tale, but pair it alongside the mutant tapeworm, and it goes to another level. The only thing I wish the author hadn't done was make one of the kids (they're all 14) a psychopath. He hadn't killed a human, but he wants to. It's horrific enough what the kids are going through trying to survive, I didn't think having a psychopath added anything to it. Overall it's really well done. I love getting into people's heads, and teens' minds are always a mess to begin with!
You can find Nick Cutter on his publisher's site and buy the book here.
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