The Beast from The East by R. L. Stine

Book Review of The Beast from The East (Goosebumps Book #43) by R. L. Stine

The Beast from The East is the story of three children – Ginger, Nat and Pat – who goes to a camping trip with their parents. After they reach a certain clearing near the stream, their parents starts hoisting a tent and the children enters the forest for playing. Soon they find themselves lost. After some time they were able to return to the stream. They walk along the stream hoping to trace back their camp. They walk a long way till the reach a clearing. But they don’t find any tent. Instead they find strange beasts. They try to hide themselves under the foliage, but are soon discovered themselves surrounded by the beasts. To their surprise, the beasts speak their language. They asked them to play a game that they are supposed to win, in order not to get eaten by the beasts.

“You’re the beast from the east,” one of the beasts tells them. They explain some of the rules of the game. They are supposed to play the game till sunset. If they win, they may leave. If they lose, they get eaten.  In this game The Beast from the East has to tag someone else, but he can’t tag from just any direction. He has to come from the east. When the children hear about the game, they realised they have little chance to win it against the beasts. 

The game starts immediately after this. The children run about in the forest trying to escape the beasts. They face life threatening situations. It is only after some time that they realise they will be free if they tag one of those beasts. That’s when they start chasing the beasts instead.

The Beast from The East by R. L. Stine is the 43^rd book in the Goosebumps series. It was supposed to come under horror genre. But somehow it didn’t. There was ample suspense in the beginning, but somehow the story turned more and more ridiculous as it went on. The beasts described by R. L. Stine were far too unrealistic even for a twelve year old. They are advanced enough to have universal language adaptors yet juvenile enough to play a silly, clueless game with the humans they were about to eat. Though the writing style of R. L. Stine is still magnificent, but The Beast from the East is too comical to be called true horror stuff.

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