Cell: A Novel by Stephen King Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Cell: A Novel
Book Review: A little shaky...
Summary: 3 Stars
I actually bought the little preloaded MP3 player at the airport before a flight. A great gadget for those on the run. Characters didn't grab me, neither did the story. I couldn't tell if he was going for sci-fi or symbolism or something in between. Just o.k. (but I hear that there's to be a film, so what do I know?)Book Review: A one sitting read
Summary: 5 Stars
There are so many reviews on this book that one more seems superfluous, but I can't help it. It's one of those books that you read all the way through at one sitting, staying up until the wee hours of the morning, all the while cursing yourself for doing so, knowing that, as soon as you are finished with it, you'll be wishing you had saved it so that you could read more the next day. I don't normally read Stephen King, but I love a good zombie story, and this is THE best zombie novel - bar none- that I have ever read. Bravo to Mr. King. Thank you for the entertainment.Book Review: A very good King novel
Summary: 4 Stars
Over the last ten years or so, Stephen King's novels have been very hit-or-miss. This is one of his best. I thought the first half of the book was good, but the second half is great -- as good as his classic novels of the 70's and 80's. He obviously put a lot of thought into the behavior of the Phonies (the victims of a mind-scrambling signal broadcast through their cell phones) and this makes the second half of the book a real treat. I definitely recommend it to anyone who loved King's classic novels, especially The Stand.Book Review: AWSOME!
Summary: 5 Stars
I have always loved Stephen King stories, I have never really gotten into his novels just for the mear fact that sometimes he is quite long winded. However this book was AWSOME!!! It scared the pants right off me up until the last page..... I do wish he gave you a little more at the end with what happened to the little boy but..... Hats off, love this book and would definetly reccommend it to anyone who loves to hear about the end of the world / zombie / trying to survive!!
Book Review: An "End-of-the-World" Yawner
Summary: 2 Stars
Ever since Stephen King came out with his absolutely engrossing and outstanding book "The Stand" in the late 1970s, he's tried various "end-of-civilization-as-we-know-it-by-evil" themes with various degrees of success. Some, such as "It" and "Insomnia" come pretty close to "The Stand's" greatness, simply because they're so "out there." Yet there's always the feeling that something like that COULD happen in our universe. The "Dark Tower" series also does this well, matching end-of-the-world with the wild, wild west.
Unfortunately, "Cell" doesn't live up to the calibre of his other novels. In this one, King brings the world-as-we-know-it to an end through "The Pulse," some kind of brainwashing deal that is piped through the world's cellphones, ostensibly by terrorists. The ones who escape The Pulse must find a way to survive in the Brave New World, which includes the phone zombies, whose brains were zapped because their ears were glued to their phones . . . yadda, yadda, yadda.
Our brave new hero is Clay, who hates cell phones (a chip off the author's block, as King doesn't own one according to the blurb on the cover). Clay has just learned that one of his characters will have a comic book series of its own, and he's thrilled because his art will finally pay off. As he's standing in line to buy ice cream, the world goes ballistic around him. A man bites off his dog's ear, the woman in front of him turns into a murdering machine, cars ram into each other -- you get the picture.
If you've read enough King, you'll see he's borrowed liberally from other of his "end-of-the-world" books to patch this one together. The strange leader of the phone zombies reminds me of a cross between Randall Flagg of "Stand" fame and Pennywise from "It." The whole journey concept from Boston to some remote corner of Maine is also reflective of "The Stand," as well as the "Dark Tower" series. And like other reviewers, the end of the book left me scratching my head with a "huh?"
In his other novels, King had some great characters working for him. I found it difficult to really like or relate to any of the characters in "Cell." Like the plot, they seemed patched together from previous novels. There was little depth to any of them, and without depth, there can't be much in the way of growth.
While this was an interesting literary and somewhat satiric rant on the pervasiveness of cell phones in our culture, I couldn't find much else to recommend "Cell" to anyone. Mr. King can do much, much better.