After a positive review in the NY Times Book Review, I thought this thriller/horror story would be a fun book to bring on our summer vacation. (When we have a long drive we like to take a book to read aloud in the car.)

I have to disagree with the NYT on this one. It is too wordy and thus too long by about one-third. Cutting extraneous adverbs alone would probably shave a dozen pages off.

SPOILER ALERT: If you are going to read this book, stop here.

Some other things that bothered E and me about this book:

• Although Pablo falls and breaks his back early on, no one actually dies until well after page 200 (of 311). Then the rest of the deaths come in a comparative rush, as if Smith got tired of writing the story (no wonder, with all those adverbs) and hurried to finish it. Yes, a good horror story needs some buildup, but 220 pages of buildup followed by 90 pages of action is unbalanced.
• Where exactly were "the ruins" that the archeaologists were going to explore? Does "the ruins" just refer to the mine?
• Why do they never check out the other mine shafts, from which they felt cool air blowing? These leads might come to nothing, but the group was desperate enough to try anything.
• Speaking of obvious things the characters didn't do -- why didn't they try to read the journals left behind by the hill's previous visitors? They might have learned something about the vines they were fighting. But even Jeff, the one seemingly most likely to survive, didn't bother reading them before burning them in fires.