Who ya gonna call (Cell - Stephen King)

Member Name: paulhanton

Product:	Cell - Stephen King
Date:	09/04/08 (44 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Better than many of his later books

Disadvantages: Not the best

Stephen King is a somewhat prolific writer and has penned around 50 novels, as well as short stories, 'series' and even books under a different name. His first published novel was Carrie - 1974, shortly followed by 'Salem's Lot - 1975, then the seminal 'The Shining' - 1977. There have been some great books since including, The Stand - 1978, The Dead Zone - 1979. Then he seemed to, in my opinion lose his way a bit until Misery - 1987, which was an absolute classic, and no doubt drew on his own experiences of being in a horrific road accident. I have to say I did not read much of his stuff again until Needful Things - 1991 and I found his writing style, by then, had changed to be a lot more complex, and 'mature', when I much preferred his raw stuff, though of course he penned another classic with The Green Mile - 1996. Many of his books have been made into some pretty awful films, with the exception of The shining and Green Mile.

So when a friend suggested Cell, I thought more than twice as to be honest I was quite bored with trying, and not finishing his stuff of late, including the bizzare Dark tower series, really not my cup of tea. So I was pleasantly surprised when the first few pages of Cell hooked me, it read pretty much like a King work of old, maybe not as gruesome, but certainly edgey.

The basic storyline starts with a young comic book artist (maybe another King experience, he has published comics) called Clay sucsessfully selling his new comic to a publisher which means he, his wife and young son will have a better life, then of course, in true King style, something mucks it all up. That something is a crazy few minutes that are the satrt of a nightmare, people attacking people, behaving like crazed feral animals, biting and killing, this happens almost everywhere, almost overwhelmingly for Clay and he battles to find safety amongst the carnage.
Clay soon realises that the people affected by this crazy behaviour have all been on their cellphones (mobiles to you and me) and he starts to think about his son and wife who have acsess to cellphones, as does almost everyone else and wonders how they are, he cannot of course contact them as communications, traffic, law enforcement and civilisation as we know it rapidly comes to a halt. These people that are affected are full of agression and attack anyone and anything and pretty soon the streets are littered with the dead and dying. As not only are the crazies attacking the non crazies, but each other, all due to a 'pulse' that has come over the cellphone network, though we never really find out for sure how and why this happened.

This is where a book review gets difficult as i want to give you enough of a flavour to get you to read it, but not too much to spoil the plot.

Clay hooks up with some other 'normies' and has to avoid, and sometimes kill the 'phoners' on his quest to get back to his wife and son. Though he, and his friends soon realise that although the 'phoners' have regressed to 'neandrethal' in some ways, loss of speech etc, they have developed, or 'awakened' parts of the brain not usually used, such as group telepathy. The 'flock' telepathy is directing survivors (normies) to a town where Clay believes his wife and son to be, though he also believes that when all the survivors reach said town they will be massacred. This is but one dilemna that Clay faces, there are others. This is a little of where the book falls down as it can be a bit predictable; small band of survivors, battling all odds, some die, ultimately some central characters make it, all we need is the Stars and Stripes fluttering in the final scenes and some uplifting music to really make it awful, thanfully this does not happen.

The plot is fast, there are characters that the reader grows to 'know' and sadness when some of them (not saying who) meet sticky ends, there is a sense of impending doom which King conveys well and he has an uncanny ability to take the reader to the place they are reading about. The ending is quite strange and abrupt, that's all I'll say about it, there is plenty of action, plenty of sub plots and some good comedic intervals.
I suspect that this will be made into a film at some point, and it could be a pretty good one, depending on casting.

Not the best of Stephen King, but better, in my opinion than some of his stuff of late.....6/10 for me, where the shining rates as a 9/10. Buy from Amazon, cheap, or at a local bootsale.

Summary: Stephen King book