The Troop - Nick Cutter

★★☆☆☆

Tropes and gross-outs wearing a Steven King mask. Torpedoed itself by explaining the threat within the first quarter of the book via lab reports the main characters never see. Said characters are cardboard stereotypes - the sensitive nerd, the dumb muscle, the kid who's not quite Right in the head, etc. I made the mistake of getting invested in the friendship between the least tropey - a boy with anger issues and his quiet friend - but whenever an opportunity arose for their bond to pay off, it... didn't. It feels like if the Losers Club broke up as soon as they got into the sewers. Not to mention the boy with the most potential for growth shoots off the deep end like a rocket - enough to plead (successfully) to be burned alive?! I've seen people comparing The Troop to Lord of the Flies but that's like comparing The Human Centipede to Kafka's Metamorphosis because they both turn people into bugs.

That said, while I wish we could have built up some dread before the gore, the gore was clearly crafted with care. I could feel the texture of the giant tubeworm Shelley fed Kent in my own mouth; exactly as awful as I want from a book like this. No cannibalism though? Really?

On Storygraph.