Instruct: Classify Amazon reviews into positive or negative sentiment
Query: The Terror of Tedium

What Ruins? The only thing related to ruins was my ruined 3 days of trying to slog through this tedious, bloated story. It would have been better as a novella or a very short, short story. The title is a non-event. The story is 200+ pages too long. The only terror was tedium. In all my years I have only stopped reading a handful of books, giving them 1 stars. I forced myself to complete this book hence the 2 star rating. There is no terror. It is not scary. It is superficial at best and does not develop any kind of plot-line. Both my wife and I found ourselves skimming many pages as they were just too painful to read.All in all not a recommend. Save your money. Sad since Mr. Smith's first novel was terrific, "A Simple Plan". If you want to read something along this thesis try Mr. James Rollins.