This is the first book I'm talking about here without English translation. As far as I know it's only available in Finnish and Swedish right now. It makes sense as the Cruise is a booze cruise between Finland and Sweden.
My friend gave me this to read and told me not to read the back of it. Just go blindly in. She hated this so much she wanted to share it I guess. According to her there was nothing good about the characters or even the story but she still read the 500 pages in one setting. I was worried but intrigued to get into Risteily. All I knew was something bad was going to happen since the cover has blood all over it.
Book starts off by introducing the cruise goers. Every chapter is named after a character it talks about and this is the theme for the entire book. First we have Marianne who used to be married, have kids and a job but who is now lonely. Cruise is the biggest thing to happen to her in a long time. We have Albin who goes to cruise with his family, his mother is in a wheelchair which is utilized somewhat in the plot. There's couples, best friends, people working at the cruise, all just focusing on this one night trip of alcohol and karaoke.
If you're ever gone to a cruise like this then you already know these characters. I felt like I was in the boat with them. None of them really jumped out at me, I didn't really care for any of them. I'm not a booze cruise fan so the stereotypical cruise people aren't my type of tea.
At first everything goes fine. You get to know a little about everyone when they arrive at the boat. Even the karaoke guy is fleshed out since he used to be a somewhat known singer who still has middle-aged fans, mostly women. I have to admit I struggled at this point. It just wasn't interesting to me.
I am not going to spoil what happens in the cruise, what the bloodbath is about. It does start relatively fast around page 85 and it involves a child. They always do, don't they? Horror and creepy children go hand in hand. As soon as the kid was mentioned I knew something bad was going to happen.I was right. The way this was written was oddly sexual and it creeped me out. I took a screenie of the creepy passage and send it to my friend asking "Really?" and she just laughed "I told you it was bad!" She was right.
The plot after that just sped up incredibly. Bad things started to happen everywhere and it felt like the book was on steroids. Sadly a lot of it was written in the same describing way, even using the practically same sentences. It really didn't help make the story appealing to me. I don't think I've ever read horror where I'm not scared at all but just laugh and don't even care if everyone dies. I just finished Stephen King's book and that made me tear up in the end. Cruise? Not so much. I thought books were supposed to make you care for the people, especially if they are in danger.
To my surprise goodreads have a lot of 4-5 positive reviews for Risteily. Some are even horrified and claim they aren't going to a cruise for a long time. Makes me wonder if we read the same book. If Risteily is ever translated to your language , give it a go if you are into ridiculous plot with boring characters. Lets you enjoy the chaos when you aren't rooting for anyone to survive.
