2006 Reading List - Cell
Book Fifty-four
Cell by Stephen King
You know, I'm pretty sure he said he was retiring a few years ago. Not that I'm complaining, mind you - this was a fun read. I just figure we should never trust a writer when they say they're done. This is like crack to them, I suppose.
With this book, King is back to my favorite story type of his - world-spanning apocalypse. Ain't nothing better than the end of the world, in my judgment, and The Stand is still one of my favorite King books.
In this one, though, he takes a slightly different approach. In The Stand, the full scale of the disaster is revealed in pieces, with tantalizing peeks at how bad Captain Trips is every now and then until we finally see just what it means to lose 99.6% of the population in ten days. Hint: stinky.
For Cell, King tells us right up front, before the first page of the story, that the world as we know it would be gone in two weeks. Then he gives us a happy, almost exuberant main character, whose life has just taken a massive turn for the better and who believes he can see a bright and shining future ahead of him.
A few pages later, of course, The Pulse hits. And the world, for all intents and purposes, ends. At 3:03 PM EST, October 1st, everyone who uses a cell phone goes instantly and ferally insane. The people who see the first waves of chaos do the natural thing - pick up their cell phones to find out what's happening. And in an instant, they are part of the madness.
It's a terrible new world, to say the least. And Clayton Riddell has to make his way to his wife and son, hoping that they survived the pulse and the murderous madness that followed.
The story is not, technically, original. King borrows a great deal from other writers and artists - he thanks Richard Matheson and George Romero up front, as well he should. And he has one of the main characters refer to Neal Stephenson as "a God," perhaps to balance against criticism of apparent similarities with Snow Crash. And, of course, because Stephenson is a god, if a terribly difficult one to understand all the time....
Of course, he can't escape comparisons to his original apocalypse book, The Stand, but he didn't reference it directly. The characters seem to have a more difficult time getting their way in this book, it seems, and they certainly cover less ground. And they're not, to my mind, as memorable as the wonderful cast of characters who wandered through The Stand. No Randall Flagg, either.
However, for you Dark Tower fans, there's one oblique reference in this book: It's in the "Kashwak" section, just at the end of part 15, pretty close to the end of the book. You should know it when you see it.
Speaking of which.... I haven't read everything King's written since he finished out Dark Tower, but it looks like he's decided that closure is overrated. That's all I'm gonna say about that. It's not a bad ending by any stretch, it's just.... *sigh*
Anyway, pick it up. Fun book.
Cell by Stephen King
You know, I'm pretty sure he said he was retiring a few years ago. Not that I'm complaining, mind you - this was a fun read. I just figure we should never trust a writer when they say they're done. This is like crack to them, I suppose.
With this book, King is back to my favorite story type of his - world-spanning apocalypse. Ain't nothing better than the end of the world, in my judgment, and The Stand is still one of my favorite King books.
In this one, though, he takes a slightly different approach. In The Stand, the full scale of the disaster is revealed in pieces, with tantalizing peeks at how bad Captain Trips is every now and then until we finally see just what it means to lose 99.6% of the population in ten days. Hint: stinky.
For Cell, King tells us right up front, before the first page of the story, that the world as we know it would be gone in two weeks. Then he gives us a happy, almost exuberant main character, whose life has just taken a massive turn for the better and who believes he can see a bright and shining future ahead of him.
A few pages later, of course, The Pulse hits. And the world, for all intents and purposes, ends. At 3:03 PM EST, October 1st, everyone who uses a cell phone goes instantly and ferally insane. The people who see the first waves of chaos do the natural thing - pick up their cell phones to find out what's happening. And in an instant, they are part of the madness.
It's a terrible new world, to say the least. And Clayton Riddell has to make his way to his wife and son, hoping that they survived the pulse and the murderous madness that followed.
The story is not, technically, original. King borrows a great deal from other writers and artists - he thanks Richard Matheson and George Romero up front, as well he should. And he has one of the main characters refer to Neal Stephenson as "a God," perhaps to balance against criticism of apparent similarities with Snow Crash. And, of course, because Stephenson is a god, if a terribly difficult one to understand all the time....
Of course, he can't escape comparisons to his original apocalypse book, The Stand, but he didn't reference it directly. The characters seem to have a more difficult time getting their way in this book, it seems, and they certainly cover less ground. And they're not, to my mind, as memorable as the wonderful cast of characters who wandered through The Stand. No Randall Flagg, either.
However, for you Dark Tower fans, there's one oblique reference in this book: It's in the "Kashwak" section, just at the end of part 15, pretty close to the end of the book. You should know it when you see it.
Speaking of which.... I haven't read everything King's written since he finished out Dark Tower, but it looks like he's decided that closure is overrated. That's all I'm gonna say about that. It's not a bad ending by any stretch, it's just.... *sigh*
Anyway, pick it up. Fun book.