Reviews

The Ancient by Muriel Gray

whatmeworry's review

4.0

‘The Ancient’ falls squarely into one my favourite sub-genres: Monster in a confined space. This time the monster is an Ancient Incan deity and the confined space is a cargo ship. The story is populated with a great cast: a kickass heroine who wouldn’t be out of place in a James Cameron movie, a drunk in need of redemption and a cowardly, scheming human villain who causes almost as many problems as the monster. Along the way are some great scary scenes, a tonne of gore, enough action to keep things satisfying, a smattering of humour and just the right mount of technical detail about life on a cargo ship (enough that you feel like you’ve learned something but not so much it gets boring). All of the above makes me really keen to read Gray’s other two novels (I had a paperback copy of her first ‘The Trickster’ for years but never quite got to it) and disappointed that she has only published three.