THE RITUAL
by Adam Nevill
I wish I’d written this ...
... because it gets really tense!
A book of two halves. For the first 260 pages, we follow four friends as they get lost in a forest and are picked off one by one by a horrific but unseen presence. This part of the book is really excellent, imbued with palpable fear and written in an addictively straightforward style. We then move on to the tale of the lone survivor who is imprisoned in a house by three psychos who mean to sacrifice him to whatever it was he just escaped. This part of the story initially feels like too much of a change of pace—almost like a separate novel—and starts to drag a little. However, the climactic chapters bring it all back together, and the final couple of chapters are incredibly tense and thrilling. For certain, I'll be reading more Adam Nevill.
From the publisher
Four old university friends reunite for a hiking trip in the Scandinavian wilderness of the Arctic Circle. No longer young men, they have little left in common and tensions rise as they struggle to connect. Frustrated and tired they take a shortcut that turns their hike into a nightmare that could cost them their lives.
Lost, hungry and surrounded by forest untouched for millennia, they stumble across an isolated old house. Inside, they find the macabre remains of old rites and pagan sacrifices; ancient artefacts and unidentifiable bones. A place of dark ritual and home to a bestial presence that is still present in the ancient forest, and now they’re the prey.
As the four friends struggle toward salvation they discover that death doesn’t come easy among these ancient trees ...
