The Troop

How it reads

The Troop is horror (body horror, specifically), and its dominant mood is cosy. Low stakes, warm company: the kind of book you read under a blanket. It moves fast: plot-driven and hard to put down, the kind of book that carries you along even when you're tired.

It's set in the wilderness or at sea, in the recent past, told in the third person across several viewpoints. Its central concerns are survival, friendship and nature. In weight it's heavy and literary — denser, more serious, and more demanding of you.

It stands alone, so there's nothing else you need to read first or after. The ending is dark — no rescue, no neat bow. At 358 pages it's an ordinary novel's length. It's well known, the kind of book most keen readers have heard of.