text: The book jacket for "The Ruins" offers a can't-miss premise:  a group of post-grad American tourists at play in Mexico jump at the chance for a little adventure among Mayan ruins but find but then find themselves in unimaginable danger.  It's the stuff of great Summer thrillers ready to be taken to the beach.  But 319 pages later, the reader is left to wonder whether or not the publisher put the wrong book in the jacket.  
  
  Almost immediately, you'll notice that Smith's writing is as dense as the jungles that make the setting.  However, despite the endless stream of words, his descriptions are often threadbare.  Plus, there are no chapter breaks, which eventually pushes the pace until it feels like an assignment to continue.  
  
  Next, the characters themselves begin to fall flat.  There are only really two couples to keep track of, and yet it's difficult for the first third of the book to distinguish them.  There is little to keep you interested in what they're doing or why they might be doing it.  Smith's attempts at developing these four as characters come in fits and spurts.  This seems obviously haphazard and hurried - the author is jamming in backstory whenever needed to explain characters' actions as if he were patching leaks in a dam.  By the end of the book, the foursome seems to be as disinterested in each other as the reader is in them.  
  
  And for the readers who are hoping to discover something of interest in the setting such as Mayan mythology or archeological lore, forget it.  Aside from language barriers with the locals, there is no reason why this fantastical story couldn't have been set in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains, the Saharan desert, or anywhere else.  The danger posed has nothing to do with Mexico, archeology or mythology at all.  
  
  Ah yes, the danger posed.  Well, I can't say much at all because anyone could give away the entire book with one line of explanation - that's how thin the plot is.  The numerous other reviews that fault this as a short story masquerading as a novel are exactly right.  Suffice it to say that when you do realize what the danger is (and you'll realize it well before any of the well-educated characters do), it's a real eye-roller, as if to say "I read this many pages for THIS?".
  
  By the time the story concludes, it's more irritating than suspenseful.  The characters take so long to blithely undertake any course of action at all that you'll start rooting against them.  Eventually scenes of gore start piling up in an obvious and lazy attempt to interject some action, but even aside from being misdirected, it's too little too late.  
  
  This book could have been an adventure, a supernatural thriller, a survival tale, or a horror screenplay.  It could have even taken the high road as an examination on people's reactions to situations of extreme stress:  some take the lead, even enjoying the challenge, while others whither into a shell of hopelessness.  But none of the possibilities ever come to fruition in this disappointing effort. 
  