The Ritual: Now A Major Film, The Most Thrilling Chiller You'll Read This Year

Two third of the book is awesome. Then it goes downhill.

Amazing...

There was a time, more years ago than I care to mention, when I read nothing but horror novels. I knew who the King was and I devoured page after page of his rambling prose, I was in love with the works of James Herbert, fascinated and often sickened by the splatter-punks. I would squeeze in a short story from the Pan Books between novels and I explored the likes of Koontz, Barker, Laymon, Lumley and others. I became personal friends with several dark scribes and even had one horror author (Steve Harris) come visit and stay several days while we drank whisky and talked genre history - a journey that took us from Stoker and Poe via Jackson, Lovecraft and down that dark winding road to Stephen King and of course there was a little Guy N. Smith thrown in for good measure. Eclectic blood soaked days, indeed.That was then though but these days apart from the odd Stephen King, and he's long broadened out from basic horror, I've not really explored the genre. So I'm not sure how I stumbled across The Ritual by Adam Nevill but I did, and all I can say is WOW! This is a brilliant read that showed me that not only was the genre alive and well but it remains as much fun as its always been.It was the plot of the book - several city slicker friends out of their depths in the Scandinavian wilderness - which appealed because I am a great fan of nordic noir, and that particular sub-genre often skirts around the borderline of what we would call horror fiction.Of course the fact that the author's gained much praise from critics, even being called the British Stephen King also intrigued me.After a few pages I was hooked and picked up the book at every opportunity - it starts off by exploring the fractured relationships between the four lifelong friends, before they take a wrong turning and become lost in an ancient forest where they are stalked by some sort of creature that may be as old as time itself. Throw in Viking legends, a death metal combo. the old Gods and a group of hillbillies that seem to have been spawned from a mating between Deliverance and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Oh, and let's not forget that pitiful old woman who just may be the creepiest character in the entire book.The author does an excellent job of creating atmosphere and the tension is handled so well that the pages just fly by, as the reader becomes engrossed in the well constructed and expertly handled story. Things do get gruesome in places but there is a lot of black humour that is positioned in such a way as to allow the reader to go with the more ridiculous sections of the narrative.To sum up then this is a powerhouse of a horror novel - often terrific and never silly. That's quite an accomplishment.

We’ve literally just finished this book, and keep taking deep restorative breaths.Here’s a little book description…In Adam Nevill’s The Ritual, 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 . . .The Ritual is an absolutely astounding story, and has left us feeling wrung out, exhausted and thoroughly satiated by what was an epic story of survival against ancient evil forces in an hostile, Scandinavian wasteland. Neville literary skills ensured that we felt the same hunted, terrorised emotions of the four friends – with clear, tight prose he enables us to experience the despair, the pain, the abject terror and palpable fear of being lost, and hunted. Weakened by injury, tired, hungry and vulnerable prey to a primal predator they can’t comprehend. You are transported to the damp, low light of the forest, you can literally smell the moss and the moist earth, feel the cold mist- and rarely has a book taken us there so, so authentically.It’s almost left us speechless- but not quite!The Ritual is reminiscent of the Blair witch project- that age old cliche of a group of friends lost in the woods ( one that the thriller girls love and return to again and again ) is made all the more horrifying! This book feels like, a tale of two halves, the first is eerie and intense, the second becomes more horror filled and filled with urgency, as it reaches a cinematic climax that left us breathless. We had to keep putting the book down to take a breath, this is not light reading and not for the faint hearted! Several scenes left our skin crawling and the hairs on the back of our necks rising.. The holy grail of a good horror!If you’re looking for a read that’s genuinely scary and that will disturb as well as entertain you, you’ve found the book.This is a modern horror that delivers, well written and exceptionally eerie, Nevill crafts a terrifying atmosphere that literally grabs you with urgency and will not let you rest … there’s no slow build, no setting the scene we as the reader are catapulted straight into a sense of peril, of impending doom, which we really liked.For so, so many reasons this books going to haunt us for a VERY long time! It provides all a horror / thriller seeker could ask for in abundance… It’s powerful, disturbing and Macabre and extraordinarily exceptional. WE LOVED IT! Can you tell??It’s an unforgettable read that we can’t recommend enough.We just can’t help but ask why its taken us this long to discover such a talented writer?? We will be looking forward to catching up on his vast back catalog now ( as he boasts several exciting titles with promising premises that sound like perfect reads for us ) we’ve heard he should be celebrated as a horror aficionado and we can see why, he has serious talent!We are also looking forward to watching the movie version of the book to compare and contrast as it looks like it involves a strong cast and will be interesting to see if they captured the atmosphere as successfully as the book.So to sum up this was our perfect read with strong elements of thriller, survival and horror, it’s pacy, descriptive and boasts a great storyline that keeps you engaged from start to finish! It’s very easy to award this 5 stars⭐️… Grab this amazing, gritty book and we bet you won’t be able to put it down!!

Adam Nevill is a top bloke - go find him on Facebook and you'll see! In fact, he's such a nice chap, you really wonder how he can write something as cruel and nasty as this!The book starts off with a group of friends hiking through the Swedish woodland - something that Nevill has, himself, done. As an exercise-o-phobe, that sounds fairly horrifying to me, to start with. But it gets worse.The first half of the book is an exquisitely detailed almost minute-by-minute retelling of the horrors of being lost in primordial woods and pursued by something unseen and terrifying. Even though it isn't written first person, Nevill gets right into the head of Luke - one of the four walkers - and makes the writing increasingly subjective as we suffer Luke's pain along with him.Then the second half of the book changes dramatically - I won't spoil it by saying how - but everything you thought you understood from the book's first half, shifts.The book mostly goes for creepy and dreadful (in the literal sense) rather than shocking and gory. It'll be interesting to see if the film does likewise.Some books you read are clearly just scripts with 'he said', 'she said' added. This is not one of those books. Nevill clearly never imagined the book being made into a film, his writing would be less internal, if he had, but it would also be less involving.My only criticisms would be that, especially when they are whinging and bickering at the beginning, I didn't much like the four characters, so I wasn't involved in them when things started to go wrong. But I stuck with it and Nevill won me over! Also, by making them all fractious and troubled, it helps them not be the stereotypes the stalk and slash movies have led us to expect. Secondly, that dramatic gear-shift half way through - while clearly deliberate and carefully constructed - might leave the reader with the feeling that, instead of reading one unified piece, you're actually reading two halves of different books.The flip-side of that is, about half way through, I was beginning to wonder just how much suffering Nevill could inflict on his characters (and readers) so that change offers a much-needed breather from the relentless horror.This was only Nevill's second book. I look forward to reading his later books, to see how his already well-developed talents have since developed.

It sounded intriguing from the reviews that I read. Having ordered the kindle edition I settled into the first few pages thinking this could be good.After struggling, like the characters in the book do, for a chapter or two more, I found the narrative wasn't delivering as expected, becoming tedious, repetitive, thoroughly depressive, and after skipping into the bonkers second half even more so as it reached, as far as I could gather, heights of incredibility so great that I wondered at my even bothering to skip-rapidly through anymore pages and why I ordered such bizarreness in the first place. I'm sure Dan Simmons has written better books than this but I wont be buying them. Tony Webster

Cannot put into words the sheer terror that Adam Nevill always seems to manage to bring to me as I fly through the pages of his books. The Ritual was simply horrifying. One wrong turn can really make all that difference as it plunges four friends into darkness.From the very first page we get a taste of the horrors that await them, which only a light dusting in comparison to the horror that awaits them.If battling hunger, dehydration and injuries weren't bad enough, then the horrors within the forest will soon finish them off.Honestly could not put it down, chills you to the bone from the first page and it's packed full of horror that you'll love. The descriptive technique of the writer always brings out the true horrors in what's happening around them and it makes you feel you are there, within those pages and struggling to survive yourself!