Dreamcatcher by Stephen King Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Dreamcatcher
Book Review: 1 PT. War Of The Worlds + 2 Parts King = Equisite tale
Summary: 4 Stars
Stephen King must have a fondness in his heart for boyhood friendships and mentally challenged individuals. It is nice to see one such challenged person in the pivitol role. For with out such a character like "the Dudds", Dreamcatcher couldn't possibly exist.Stephen King takes his twist on the H.G. Wells classic and gives it new life. He makes an already creepy story a lot more scarier, using the old story line and adding his own brand of horror and prose. Although the idea for the book isn't original..this particular version is all King. It is the kind of book that you look back on after having finished it saying, "Man, I'd like to read that again!"
I admitt, I did get lost in some parts of the book...some of it is rather confusing. But, like all his work..at points you can get rather lost, but eventually Mr. King will always point you in the right direction later on down the road. There are over-the-top characters, down-to-earth characters, and, of course, not-of-this world characters. Who is the bad guy? Who is the good guy? All of the characters are quite unique, but yet they are all interwoven into such a dynamic that they work together like a well oiled machine.
There are parts of this book that are genuinely scary to the point of giving you nightmares. The visuals are extremely well laid out, it's like watching a movie at times rather than reading a book. I recommend this one to all fans of King and to all those who loved the original War Of The Worlds.
Book Review: A Broken Leg, A Broken Pencil
Summary: 3 Stars
True, Stephen King had been hit by a van previous to this novel (you can see that some off his pain seeped in) and couldn't sit and concentrate for very long periods of time because of the pain, but this is still one of his worse novels. The story moves in a jerky way like a cats tail and seems to have very little of a point. The characters aren't fleshed out very well and sometimes you can't feel for them at all. The whole idea of aliens can be a bit stupid at times and the ending really makes the journey feel pointless and like you've wasted your time.Still, this book did hold my attention to the very end and it does deserve some credit.
Book Review: A GREAT BOOK
Summary: 5 Stars
ANOTHER GREAT BOOK FROM STEPHEN KING. IT'S SUCH A GREAT STORY I WOULDN'T BE ABLE TO STOP IF I STARTED TELLING YOU ABOUT IT, SO LET'S JUST SAY IT'S DEFINETLY ONE YOU SHOULD READ. I COULDN'T STOP READING IT.Book Review: A Good Combination of Other King Books
Summary: 4 Stars
Dreamcatcher is an alien invasion thriller. King, being a good writer, adds in other elements, and (of course) makes reference to happenings in other books--there is graffiti saying "Pennywise Lives" at one point in the book for the "It" fans.Dreamcatcher tells the story of four friends who, as pre-teens/early teens, saved a Down's Syndrome kid, Duddits, from an attack by bullies. The friends remained in touch over the years, but lost touch with Duddits as they grew up. All four are now suffering from various adult maladies such as depression, loneliness, and alcoholism.
The four go hunting together and get caught by a blizzard and by invading aliens. They are also trapped in by psychotic army/government agents hunting the aliens and quarantining the area. The friends' are thrust into the role of protecting themselves, others in the quarantine, fighting off the aliens and saving the rest of the world. All of this makes for great pageturning, as you could only expect from King.
The book combines horror themes from several of King's earlier works in an enjoyable manner. The alien takeover of human bodies is very similar to the story King told in The Tommyknockers. The actions of the government are much like the government's actions in Firestarter or The Stand. The flashbacks between what the four friends did as kids and what they did today is similar to any number of King books, but perhaps closest to It in that they saved other children, with the exception that, unlike in almost all of King's other books, the kids were children in the late 70s rather than the 50s. Finally, much of the action involves people alone with their thoughts, with a monster, or at most with one companion. Thus, King is able to indulge in a lot of stream of consciousness, interior monologue writing. King is always a master of writing about people dealing with their own interior demons while trying to fend off outside monsters like in The Shining. He does it well here too.
My most major quibble is that King's characters always ring truest when they are average Americans, writers, or, of course, psychotics, the people King writes about best. His character development is not as good when his main characters are a psychiatrist and a history professor, as is the case here
All that said, I think that King's masterpiece of supernatural horror/thriller writing was "It" (unless you count the re-editing of "The Stand" as a new book). King clearly has moved on to other genres in his full-length novels, concentrating on fantasy in his Dark Tower series, human melodramas in books like Dolores Claiborne, The Green Mile, etc.
I believe that both he and his loyal readers feel nostalgic for his supernatural horror books, and this book was, hopefully, fun for him to write and fun for us to read for nostalgia. For new readers or readers who have read King books from other genres only, I would suggest reading some of his horror classics such as The Shining, Carrie, The Stand, It, etc. before reading this book. If you like all of those, you will like this one as well.
Book Review: A Great Book
Summary: 5 Stars
Contrary to what most people have said about this book, It quickly became one of my favorite Stephen King books. I could not put it down and finished in only a few days. I would highly recommend this book to any King fan. I'm glad I did not pay attention to the bad reviews and went ahead and read the book. This is definitely not a book to pass by.